Visual SAT-Flare Tracker 3D

1.0 CITIES - WINDOW  

The program embeds a database of about 85.000 cities that can be used both to define the observer's site and to run the location search (i.e. to search cities where a given event can be seen). In addition, the user can specify his own list of observing sites, which can be included in the city list. However, since in most of the cases, it is not necessary to deal with the whole database, the program takes advantage of filter functions to define a sub-set of selected cities, which is called the Working Cities list. The window is visible in the following picture:

Image
Fig. 1

The description of the main window's functions follows.

1.1 LIST OF WORKING CITIES

The working cities are those cities that have been selected from the main database to be managed by the main program functions. As an example, the Find Cities Along Track command, of the Tracking menu bar item, will search flare / transit visibility among the working cities. A maximum number of about 32000 cities can be simultaneously defined as working cities. However, increasing the number of working cities will result in a longer search time. The list of working cities can be sorted by Name or by Country by selecting the right option in the Sort Cities frame.

By clicking on a list entry, the observer's coordinates will be moved to the selected entry, and the globe view will be moved on that location if the Move at zenith position option is selected.


The working cities can be marked on the globe if the Mark Cities option, of the Draw menu bar item, is selected. The number of shown cities actually depends on the zoom factor, unless the Show all cities on the map regardless their size option is active.

1.2 HOW TO DEFINE THE WORKING CITIES

The working cities can be defined manually by the user, or automatically by the program after a search function has run:

1.2.1 Manual Selection


To manually select cities the Apply button has to be pressed after the following fields and options have been defined:
1.2.2 Automatic Selection

The automatic selection of working cities can be used after a search function has run. In this case it is possible to keep in the Working Cities list only those cities that have been found during the search. As an example, this function is useful to see the list of cities from where a flare event can be observed. In addition, when such a selection has been performed, by clicking on the list entry, not only the observer coordinates will be moved, but also the program time will be set to that specific event time.
To perform the automatic selection after the search, the button Keep only cities found on Track has to be pushed.

1.2 HOW TO DEFINE THE LIST OF OBSERVING SITES

At present, the list of observing sites can not be yet defined through the graphical user interface, but it has to be manually edited by means of an external text editor. The list of sites is contained in the text file whose name is sites.txt. The structure of this file is quite simple and it is here reported:

#####################################################################################################################
#
# VISUAL SAT-Flare Tracker 3D
#
# List of observing sites
#
#####################################################################################################################
#
# WGS-84 Earth Model
#
# Format:
#
# Name, Latitude (Geodetic, degrees), Longitide (degrees), Altitude (m), Time Zone (UTC+X), Site CODE (four digits)
#####################################################################################################################
MAIN SITE,45.48751,8.55833,150,+2,0423
OBSERVATORY,46.53463,8.52278,150,+2,2304


Each site is specified by means of a 6 comma-separated parameters, which are respectively:
The same rules described for the Local Settings apply also in this case.

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By Simone Corbellini