Which astronomical catalogues are supported?

Ray

If you are unsure just put the object into Simbad and it will give you J2000 location

that way you just input that into our system

http://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/simbad/

Great question, Ray. I was pleasantly surprised that it accepted "LDN 1251".

May I ask, is there any client-side validation of what I enter or could I literally enter gobbledygook?

Also, what is the acceptable format of right ascension and declination? It's good to know from your reply, Steve, that it accepts the SIMBAD format. More likely than not I will be entering it in manually particularly on the narrow-field kits.

Brian

Great question, Ray. I was pleasantly surprised that it accepted "LDN 1251".

May I ask, is there any client-side validation of what I enter or could I literally enter gobbledygook?

Also, what is the acceptable format of right ascension and declination? It's good to know from your reply, Steve, that it accepts the SIMBAD format. More likely than not I will be entering it in manually particularly on the narrow-field kits.

Brian

Brian J2000 is our preference as thats what we use to input into our booking system, it gets mega confusing otherwise.



M NGC IC are standard for our booking system, LDN SH B plus lots of others I care to forget are not used so if you can add the J2000 coordinets from Simbad then that save me going into do it afterwards

HTH

Steve

Hi Steve,

Sure J2000 but I was thinking more on the lines of the following examples. These are J2000 coordinates of Deneb expressed in various ways. A human can decipher it but can a computer?

Using hms, dms notation:
"20h 41m 25.92s +45d 16m 49.24s"

Using colons:
"20:41:25.92 +45:16:49.24"
or
"20:41:25.92 N45:16:49.24"
or
"20:41:25.92 45:16:49.24N"

Using spaces:
"20 41 25.92 45 16 49.24"

Using field names:
"RA 20 41 25.82 DEC 45 16 49.24"

I can think of more. Perhaps instead of a single free-form text input control on the web page, you can replace it with six number input controls and one dropdown (or radio button) for north/south.

Brian

Sort of like this from one of my websites:



Brian

One other thought regarding catalogs:

Perhaps two controls:
1. A dropdown to select the catalog name, for example, "M", "NGC", "IC", "LDN", etc. This way the user knows up front what is available.
2. A free-form text field to enter the catalog number

Regarding #2, on each key press JavaScript running in the browser makes an AJAX call to the server for validation. The user cannot submit the form until all validation checks are truthy.

Brian

Steve,

I'm sorry if I'm coming across critically. It's just that I know A LOT of people who love Astronomy but look at the prohibitive cost of entry and the learning required to operate a telescope. RoboScopes is perfect for them but a lot of people don't know what J2000 coordinates are, nor are they familiar with catalogs. I think that in order to bring your service to the masses you need a page of bright DSO's that are available this time of year with pictures that they can click on to order. But then there is the question of post-processing. For a fee they could request that their image be processed by a RoboScope member. Better yet, for a fee, they can receive personal guidance on how to process images themselves. These are just my thoughts.

Brian

Hi Brian,

You raise some valid points, and I would like to touch on those

Your idea of having an area that displays some bright objects that would be available (with corresponding images) is a good one,. Perhaps having 10 items visible for any given month. I can see how totally new people who just want images might like this - I will see what I can do regarding this.[/*]
Unfortunately we do not have the resources to offer any processing for customers, whether thats free or paid, but there is no harm in them asking others to help via The Warm Room [/*]
In regards to a dropdown to select a catalog number, We won't be doing anything lie this, but we will make it more visible around the site of what types of objects we can accept. We kept it as simple as we could for users - there is no validation, we validate targets manually at the moment, however eventually we won't be doing so. This is one of the reasons that we recommend users to use Telescopius.[/*]
I personally like the idea of breaking the co-ordinates up into separate labels tiers like your example - Although I can just as easy display an example of a J2000 co-ordinate above each box.[/*]
You can type Gobble-de-gook if you wish to, but I would not recommend it [/*]

Steve,

I'm sorry if I'm coming across critically. It's just that I know A LOT of people who love Astronomy but look at the prohibitive cost of entry and the learning required to operate a telescope. RoboScopes is perfect for them but a lot of people don't know what J2000 coordinates are, nor are they familiar with catalogs. I think that in order to bring your service to the masses you need a page of bright DSO's that are available this time of year with pictures that they can click on to order. But then there is the question of post-processing. For a fee they could request that their image be processed by a RoboScope member. Better yet, for a fee, they can receive personal guidance on how to process images themselves. These are just my thoughts.

Brian

not at all ?

We tried to keep the form simple if I am honest knowing that we may have to contact some users if they got it wrong for verification, as yet no one has. i have had more trouble with people treating CMOS cameras like CCD and booking inappropriate subs lengths

 Eg Epsilon 180 f2.8 with CMOS camera to image M31 and they book 600s subs!!! Despite the fact that we go into detail re sub lengths with CMOS. I have noticed over the years that consumers have a tendency to skim read at best and at worst not get past the price button ? so its a trade off between swish features, information overload or pointless costly features they simply wont use.

the website is mk1 version, in time we will in time tweak and add features but for now we just need to get open and settle for a few months while soaking up ideas and suggestions 

so please keep them coming as we will implement some for sure, please never think we are not listening ?

ps we are going to be having tuturials and an onsite “guru” so to speak

Steve

Hi gentlemen, 

I did like Brian's suggestions and awaited your replies. I realise at present you have very little little time to be able to do anything new right now. Having seen plenty of amazing results on here from people with good processing skills, I wonder if anyone might reply to this and discuss whether or not if it could be taken a bit further than Phil's suggestion.

Nothing new, but also make available to purchase a few datasets of iconic targets, for those wanting to hone/try out their processing skills before making any decision to make their own bookings. I know ic434 is available as a freebie, but that might be a bit challenging as I can testify to.   Images from the piers with an OSC might be a good starting point.

May the clear skies continue.. 

Ray 

Hi gentlemen, 

I did like Brian's suggestions and awaited your replies. I realise at present you have very little little time to be able to do anything new right now. Having seen plenty of amazing results on here from people with good processing skills, I wonder if anyone might reply to this and discuss whether or not if it could be taken a bit further than Phil's suggestion.

Nothing new, but also make available to purchase a few datasets of iconic targets, for those wanting to hone/try out their processing skills before making any decision to make their own bookings. I know ic434 is available as a freebie, but that might be a bit challenging as I can testify to.   Images from the piers with an OSC might be a good starting point.

May the clear skies continue.. 

Ray 

In the future we will be selling individual data sets that we take for peope who want to have a play or indeed do not want to wait for the data set. We are in the "Now" generation it would seem. This will be in a couple of months when we have finished building the page and have more time to dedicate to it.

As much as i like sharing, if we have to much free stuff on the site then nobody will actualy buy anything LOL We will change the free dataset from time to time however

ps the OSC cameras are not the best to put up for free datasets as they require quite a lot of PC oomph just to stack 10 Gozillion frames

Steve

Don't I just know it!  My mega PC failed the other day and I could not understand why....  3.4Ghz overclocked, 32GB ram, 4 x 1TB ssd disks striped to make one large disk for fast processing - so why?  Turns out I had the system swap file on the same drive because it was such a fast drive.  Now that I have moved the swap file, it works much better!  Don't you just love computers (not even going to mention Microsoft -  ooopps - just did!)

Regards

Mark