STVID

stvid is a set of python programs to detect and identify satellite tracks on observations of the night sky, and measure the satellite positions to determine and/or update their orbits.

Background

This software will take over the satellite tracking functionality of C.Bassa's sattools. By porting the functionality to python, and using astropy, and opencv, the software is indented to be easier to install and operate.

This repository is currently used for development, and relies, for the moment, on programs from the sattools repository (namely satid).

Installation

stvid handles requirements using pip. You can install requirements by running :

pip install -r requirements.txt

Consider using a VirtualEnv to run stvid on a separate python virtual environment.

Additional requirements

• Hough3dLines
  • hough3dlines needs to be executable in your path
• Sextractor
  • sextractor needs to be executable in your path
• Astromentry.net
  • solve-field needs to be executable in your path, with index files appropriate for your FOV
• ZWO ASI SDK if using a ZWO camera

Configuration

• Copy the configuration.ini-dist file to configuration.ini
• Edit configuration.ini with your preferred settings
• Make sure ST_DATADIR is set as an env variable pointing to the /data folder of sattools

Running

TBD

Todo

Features to be implemented.

High priority

• Use sunset/sunrise times for starting/stopping data acquisition.
• Automatic astrometric calibration.
• Recognize unidentified satellite/meteor tracks using 3D Hough transform.

Medium priority

• Pause data acquisition of the current line-of-sight (alt/az) is in the Earth's shadow for a particular orbital altitude.
• Investigate sensitivity loss of significance=(max-mean)/sigma if the four frame images are stored as 8bit integers instead of floats.

Low priority

• Implement python based star finding (stick with source extractor for now).
• Migrate to python based SGP4/SDP4 algorithms
• Use masks to mask unilluminated CCD areas.
• Investigate automatic submission of IOD measurements to SeeSat-L.
• Migrate user settings to a configuration file.

Run acquisition at startup

• Add user to video group (sudo adduser <username> video).
• Add video device to udev rules (add SUBSYSTEM=="video1", GROUP="video", MODE="0660" in /etc/udev/rules.d/10-webcam.rules).
• Create start up script in /etc/init.d. Call capture script as user with su <username> -c "acquire.py".

License

© 2018-2019 Cees Bassa

Licensed under the GPLv3.