ACP Planner & moon

[Daniele Carosati]

Hi Bob, hi to all.
I use ACP Planner regurarly to monitoring a list of blazars distribuited about an hour in RA fron each other. So the planner is always the same. But sometimes the moon disturbs a lot of sources.
Is there a way to avoid going near the moon (for example 20 degrees around)?

Thank you in advance, Daniele

[Bob Denny]

Use Planner's integration with TheSky or StarryNight to visualize the sky while making your plan. You will clearly be able to see where the Moon is in relation to your targets. If you use a different planetaruim, you can still visualize but you'll have to manually enter the target coordinates into Planner (which you're probably doing now).

[Daniele Carosati]

Thank you Bob for your suggestions. In fact I'm doing just in this way but I thought there was a possibility of adding a setting, as (for example) to limit height of an object to be recorded.
It would be very comfortable, even in a future!
Thank you again, Daniele

[Bob Denny]

Daniele --

Can you please explain a bit more? I don't know how the height of an object would relate to the position of the moon and the distance of the object from the Moon...

[Daniele Carosati]

Hi Bob, well, I use my telescope to monitoring in R-band a list of blazar to produce photometric data concerning a more estended research with other professional observatory around the world. The consortium is named WEBT (Whole Earth Blazar Telescope) and the specific program is GASP (Glast Agile Support Program).
Attached you can see my tipical session. Every clear night, I simply run the observations. Sometimes, however, when the moon is too close to a source, the light level is very high and ACP cannot solve the image and in some cases the program says that the telescope seems lost and the session stopped.
So, I asked myself, if there was a way to tell at ACP do not point closer than 30 degrees from the moon (for example).
Unlike every night, I have to check the position of the moon and discard nearby sources. If it were possible to do it automatically, would be a sicure advantage!
I hope this help, thank you
Daniele
PS: Another importat thing is that ACP goes to the next source and do not stop the session.

[Bob Denny]

Daniele --

ACP is designed to "do what it is told" and not to make decisions on its own. On the other hand, ACP Scheduler (an add-on to ACP) does have Moon Avoidance and many other features for complex situations such as yours. With Scheduler, you never use Planner as you do not need to tell it "when" to observe, only "what" and "within what constraints". It is popular among science astronomers who acquire data on many targets in a night.


If you are comfortable speaking in English and would like to talk about this, I would be happy to do so. I will be at a conference next week, but perhaps a time after that?

[Daniele Carosati]

Hi Bob, thank you for your advise.
By the end of the year I have to update my observatory but for now I do not have time to take the tests seriously. So meanwhile I will look at features Scheduler and later download the trial version.
Unfortunately I do not speak fluent English, I'm sorry, and therefore it's preferable to communicate by e-mail or the forum.
Regards, Daniele

[Bob Denny]

Daniele --

Your English is just fine!!! I wish I spoke Italian! Continue to talk here in the Comm Center :-)