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ELBRUS
A FREE TELESCOPE POINTING PROGRAM
Elbrus est un programme gratuit...
Elbrus es un programa gratuito...
Introduction
Program download
Elbrus 2003, 2005, 2007... the history
They said...
Elbrus: How does it work ?
INTRODUCTION
Elbrus is a free telescope pointing program. It analyzes a sky image with a few stars, and calculates the coordinates of the image centre.
Since may 2005 it is used with very good performances.
What for ? In astrophotography, a common problem is putting the object inside the ccd frame. Often we are near the target, we have an image with stars but we don't know in which direction is the object. We wrote this program as a help in such situations. If we know exactly the coordinates of the image centre, it will be easy to drive the mount to the object.
Another situation where Elbrus is useful is when we are far from the telescope ( remote control ) and we don't know where is the tube pointing to. In such a 'lost in space' case, we can find our position by doing a search in a wide region such as a spherical ring or even the full sky.
Elbrus is also successfully used for recentering the scope between captures. Each image is analysed and the offset from the reference one is computed. This offset is used by the mount driving program to recenter the mount. This way we can cature images during hours in despite of the drift in the telescope tracking.
I'd like to add that the astro-amateurs who are using it are very happy ... and so we are :-)
Some caracteristics:
Program type: Star locator.
Object: Help in telescope pointing from a captured image.
Strategy: Search in the proprietary database, by distances between stars and image orientation.Building the polygon with more sides.
This algorithm is very fast and very robust. There are no false solutions with more than 15 sides.
At the program entry: An image with stars.
Size of the analized area: from 10x10 to 20x30 arc minutes.
Image types: FITS and BMP
At the program output: Image center coordinates,
GSC numbers of the identified stars, main identified astronomical objects, distance to the target, direction to the target.
Languages: English, french, spanish.
Working modes: manual and automatic.
Image analyse: The full image or a part of the image.
Search in the database:
Search in a 5x5 degrees sky window.
Search in a 30x30 degrees sky window.
Search in a spherical ring.
Search in the full sky. Search in a 2x2 degrees window for any camera angle... and more
Database:
The database was built for containing:
- the 5 brightest stars in every 15x10 arc minutes sky window.
- the pre-calculated (smaller than 18 arc minutes) distances between these stars.
Stars in the database: 8 155 625
Distances in the database: 60 332 797
Size of the database: about 800 MBytes.
There are some 'holes' without stars in the database.
Communication with others programs:
Synchronizes by ASCOM with telescopes supporting this protocol,
with Cartes du ciel - Sky Chart by Patrick Chevalley,
with COR by Cristóbal García,
with PicGoto by Angel Caparrós.
The program has a DDE server.
ELBRUS 2003, 2005, 2007... THE HISTORY
SOME DATES
2008 THE BIG SURPRISE:
22/MAR/2008 The International Astronomical Union, approved my name Pulido for asteroid number 66843 as proposed by his discoverer James Roe, in recognition for the program Elbrus !!!.
2005 THE PRESENT ELBRUS:
10/MAY/2005 Sent first version for beta testing to Cristobal.
01/SEP/2005 Sent Elbrus to other astro-amateur friends.
13/JAN/2006 I created the new LocalizaEstrellas@yahoogroups.com group for spanish users.
01/FEB/2006 Thanks to Cristobal, Jose Luis and Juan there are now three internet sites for downloading the full database.
13/NOV/2006 Announced in several english and french groups scope-drive@yahoogroups.com, astroprg@yahoogroups.com, qcuiag@yahoogroups.com.
2003 THE PRIMITIVE ELBRUS:
29/SEP/2003 Announced the very first Elbrus version in the group ConstructoresTelescopios@yahoogroups.com.
06/OCT/2003 Announced the first Elbrus version in the group Astroprg@yahoogroups.com.
SOME COMMENTS :-)
10 JAN 2006 Cristobal Garcia:
For me , as a betatester, Elbrus is vital. I use it at start up in my remote observatory
and then for synchronising and correcting positional errors.
11 FEB 2006 Angel y Rafa "OAC":
Oh yes, ... we were playing with the program searching in different fields, and it solved ALWAYS. !!!!!!!! CONGRATULATIONS !!!!!!!!!!!!
30 MAY 2006 Tomas Gomez:
I also tryed using Elbrus in "wait for" mode. It's brilliant!.
26 abril 2007 Enrique Arce:
Thanks to Elbrus I can move the telescope all the night and I know where it is pointing to.
27 abril 2007 Juan Lacruz:
I am also using it for remote obsevation and it works very very well.
May 22, 2007 John McClusky:
I am very impressed with your
software, especially the way that it can solve an image searching such a large area.
28 Nov 2007 Cristobal Garcia:
Certainly, I cannot live without Elbrus :-))
I began using it only for pointing the telescope. Now I use it continously for recentering the image between the captures.
Dec 19 2007 Chuck Shaw:
There was no problem in Elbrus QUICKLY solving for the position, no matter where I was in the sky! I have the current epoch selected, and was using 16 sides as the threshold for performing an automatic sync. I also had Elbrus in the "wait for an image mode", so as soon as I saved the image, Elbrus would solve for the position and send it to Sitech.exe and up would pop the init window...... Most times the init window would pop up before I could click on the elbrus icon to bring the Elbrus window to focus..... AMAZING!!!!!!!!
Many thanks for sharing such an incredible software as Elbrus!!!!!!
PROGRAM DOWNLOAD
You can download the program and the start-up package from the files section in the yahoo group:
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/StarLocatorElbrus
For english language messages, please use the Yahoo group
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/StarLocatorElbrus
(Updated 06 December 2007 Alfonso Pulido)
This is ... http://www.astrosurf.com/pulgar ... enjoying astronomy ...
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