Flare Standard Reports (FPAS) - Update

satrack@libero.it

I’ve just concluded a revision of the FPAS standard. Following the 
received comments I implemented the following changes:

1)	The Station COSPAR ID can be used instead of the observer ID. 

2)	The online generator now asks only initials and last digits of day 
and year of birth in order to highlight that the full details are not used. 
A different method can be conceived to generate the observer ID but 
I fear it would result to complicate… (e.g. adding month and year)

3)	I introduced the token “inv” for invisible magnitude

4)	I added all the 7 formats of the IOD standard for specifying 
RA/DEC and AZ/EL (this would also make conversions from IOD 
to FPAS easier)

5)	The task of including the full TLE is left to the FPAS collector. 
The reporter can embed the TLE epoch if needed. (However,
when not forbidden the reporter can still embeds free TLEs)

6)	I added a flag to distinguish GEO flare from “regular” flare

I have also decided to extend the report adding some optional fields 
(in order to cover many flare reports that I often read here on seesat):

A)	Extending the idea to distinguish between GEO and “regular” 
flares, I added a new block of flags which describes both speed 
and direction of the satellite. This will help also in case of satellite 
identification.

B)	I added a field to specify how long the observation lasted

C)	I added some flags to specify when the flare/flash/event peak 
occurred with respect to the observation interval

D)	I added a format for specifying azimuth by means of cardinal points

E)	I added a format for specifying flare magnitude as a relative change

F)	Other minor changes such as new fields for the magnitude 
uncertainty, estimation method…

The new version (v1.2) of the document (with all changes marked in 
red) can be found at this link:

http://www.satflare.com/fpas.html

The up-to-date generator is available at this link:

http://www.satflare.com/fpas_generator.html

In addition, I’ve created a new tool that allows FPAS reports to be 
easily checked and displayed in a user-friendly format:

http://www.satflare.com/fpas_reader.html

Try for example this test report:

TEST,25777,XMR53A,20120806,192347,1s,-,45.31,8.23,100,FPUF,RNN,3m,5s,-2,5,
I1CCLNN,N,-,-,-,-,-,-,-;

I suggest trying the new format without publishing the token FPAS 
until the format will be confirmed. The online generator 
writes the token TEST instead of FPAS.

I will be waiting for new comments and requests.

Best Regards,
Simone

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