my-space-cal
We have a wealth of astronomical satellites from various organisations circling around the Earth staring at numerous astronomical targets. But on a given time, where do they exactly look at? Each satellite project has its own devoted time schedule retrievable from the web, giving information about observations done in the past, observations foreseen in the near-future (i.e., short-term), and observations foreseen in the far future (i.e., long-term). All have different ways and styles to retrieve and display the schedules. This makes it extremely cumbersome to see what a satellite is observing or did observe at a given time or will observe in the future; comparing schedules from different satellites are even harder.This project is solving the Space Cal NYC challenge. Description
Functional Specifications:
A first set-up of the project was done (mySpaceCal.com), but it is not satisfactory yet. Clearly, a different touch is needed: things need to be improved or changed, and speeded up. Are there alternative ways to retrieve and display the data? We encourage creative enthusiasts to develop more ideas for mySpaceCal, such as making it also accessible for smartphones through a web-based or stand-alone App. First focus on satellites observing in a common wavelength, e.g., X-rays, investigating exotic objects in the sky such as black holes: Chandra, INTEGRAL, NuSTAR, RXTE, Suzaku, Swift, and XMM-Newton. What are the targets of the day, of the week, of the month? The next step is to extend the calendar with other satellites, observing gamma-rays (AGILE, Fermi), and other wavelengths (Herschel, Hubble Space Telescope, Spitzer). The various time schedules should be made accessible in an easy-to-use, simple format. For example, the timelines should reflect what the targets of a satellite is on a given day, week or month. Start and end times of the observations should be taken into account. More detailed information about the target (e.g., satellite, target, sky coordinates, start and end time, instrument info) should be available to users who would like to obtain it. The tool should be developed such that it is easy to add new or other observatories. Also, one should be able to select the observatories one wishes to see the schedules of. The modules for the different observatories should also be flexible enough to allow to revise the URL of the observing schedules, and to capture possible changes in the format of the time schedules
Project Information
License: GNU General Public License version 3.0 (GPL-3.0)
Source Code/Project URL: http://gmotta.github.io/web/index.html
Resources
google -
