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:

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 SelectionTo manually select cities the Apply button has to be pressed after the following fields and options have been defined:- Minimum population: this field indicates the minimum population of the cities to be selected. This parameter is useful to ignore small cities.
- County Code: this
field indicates the country code of the cities to be selected. This
filter is useful to include only the cities from specific country.
- Name Filter: this name is used to filter out the cities whose name dosn't contain the specified text. This filter is useful to pick up a city or a group of cities by their name.
- Include Observing Sites: if this option is checked all the observing sites will be included in the Working Cities
list. This option is useful to search from which sites a given event is
visible. In that case the user may want to consider only observing
sites rather than cities. For this reason the Get Only Observing Sites button has been created: by pressing this button only the Observing sites will be included in the Working Cities list.
1.2.2 Automatic SelectionThe
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:
- Site Name
- Site Geodetic Latitude
- Site Longitude
- Site Altitude
- Site Time Zone
- Site Code
The same rules described for the Local Settings apply also in this case.
BACK
By
Simone Corbellini
