IVOA, Samp & sharpcap

[jean.paul]

- This is my first mail in this forum.

- I'm trying to setup an access to the "Virtual Observatory" (VO) in Sharpcap.

- Virtual Observatory (aka VO) is ruled by IVOA https://ivoa.net/astronomers/getting_started.html ,a worldwide consortium of professional astronomers and institutions. VO give free access to catalogs (>30 000) , images database, spectra database, missions database, etc...

VO is the way to solve the question : "How to receive the celestial coordinates of an(y) Object and let the mount slew to this point".

With Sharpcap scripting and some hacking, we succeeded to get a "proof of concept". We try now to package a solution for sharpcap users.

Carte du ciel still allow access to VO (Via menu view/samp) and the use of free software "Aladin".
I am currently developping an integrated module for PRISM.
I'm glad to collaborate with two professional astronomers, and hope to get support via a PRO/AM collaboration from Observatoire de Paris.

[admin]

Hi,

that sounds really interesting - I will be keen to see how you get it to work. I guess you will have a SharpCap python .py script to run to add the extra functionality.

cheers,

Robin

[Renaud]

Hello,

I work with Jean-Paul who wrote the initial post of this thread. Here are the technical details for our proof of concept:
- We use the NumSharp library (https://github.com/SciSharp/NumSharp).
- We modified a python-3.4 conda installation of astropy-2.0.16 to use NumSharp insteady of numpy (which cannot be used directly as explained in viewtopic.php?t=4355) - see the small attached diff file.
- Then we run our samp.py script (attached) which uses the module astropy.samp to establish communication with the SAMP Hub, register to SAMP pointing events, and slew the mount. This script contains the samp_init() function which needs to be adapted to your system for paths where NumSharp and astropy are installed.

I tested this POC with Aladin and the ASCOM mount simulator.

This is still beta but we are interested by your tests and comments/suggestions.

Clear skies,

Renaud.

2 attachements included

[Renaud]

Hello,

The POC now features a SAMP Control Panel GUI triggered by a new "SAMP" button that is setup at the right of the toolbar (below the menu) when the samp.py script is run. The SAMP Control Panel display the coordinates received from a SAMP-enabled application (such as Aladin) and provides a button to slew the current mount to that sky position.

As you can see in the attached screenshot, I have used Aladin to locate an object in a catalog from the Virtual Observatory, and clicked on that object to send his coordinates to SharpCap which is asking for confirmation to slew to that object.

If you are interested to try this feature, I have created a github repo: https://github.com/rsav/samp4sharpcap with my updated samp.py script and detailed installation instructions. I would be interested to know the results of your tests. Thanks in advance for your suggestions.

Clear skies,

Renaud.

[Renaud]

Here is the attachement:

Screenshot_SharpCap+Aladin.jpg (385.87 KiB) Viewed 341 times

[admin]

Hi,

thanks for sharing - hope that some people try it out and give you feedback

cheers,

Robin