[Laser] Telescope & GPS interface

[Phil Lefever]

At 03:12 AM 7/20/2007, you wrote:
>Hi Phil
>
>Do you know of a description of an interface designed to drive a telescope 
>from a PC?

Google Telescope Satellite Tracking and you will come
up with a number of hits.

A couple of the early results are:

http://www.heavenscape.com/
http://www.comsoft-telescope.com/


>I am trying to find a means to take photos of satellites or planes using a 
>webcam mounted on a telescope. Of course, the tracking is critical so one 
>way to do it would be I think by means of a joystick connected to the PC.

Getting photos of the ISS or LEO satellites doesn't
seem too difficult. From what I have read the software
is setup, fresh orbital elements are loaded, then the
observer waits for AOS. At the point the satellite
becomes visible the telescope aim is then manually
adjusted to put the object on finder scope cross hairs.
I guess this shows how picky this all is, especially
when using equipment that us mortals have to use... As
for tracking planes I'd forget about that, you don't
have orbital data to predict their path. Now if you
had a RADAR, hmm...


>There is a british amateur called John Locker who manages to take photos 
>of the ISS with his telescope
>http://www.satcom.freeserve.co.uk/geos.htm 
><http://www.satcom.freeserve.co.uk/geos.htm>

I'll assume that he uses the typical video setup for
his imaging. Most of the ISS stills were shot as video
at ~30 frames per second. Afterwards you take the
good frames and use some digital image stacking and
registration software to form the image.

I think my comment on all this is that photographing
satellites is for those that DON'T already have enough
frustration in their day to day life ;)

73

Phil

--------------------------------------------------------------------
Phil Lefever - Burnsville, MN
Amateur Radio Callsign - KB0NES EN34jt
C8-SP XT-10 C102 80WV