STVID
stvid is a set of python programs to detect and identify satellite tracks on video observations of the night sky, and measure the satellite positions to determine and/or update their orbits.
This software will take over the satellite tracking functionality of my sattools. By porting the functionality to python, and using astropy, and opencv, the software is easier to install and operate.
This repository is currently used for development, and relies, for the moment, on programs from the sattools repository.
Installation
stvid handles requirements using pip. You can install requirements by running pip install -r requirements.txt
. You should consider using a VirtualEnv to run stvid on a separate python virtual environment. You will also need to download the Tycho 2 catalog.
You will also need to build and install Hough3dLines code, and have sextractor installed in your system.
Configuration
- Copy the
configuration.ini-dist
file toconfiguration.ini
- Edit
configuration.ini
with your preferred settings
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 withsu <username> -c "capture_1.sh"
.
License
© 2018-2019 Cees Bassa
Licensed under the GPLv3.