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centowen / salsa

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Track the sun, with offsets #37

Open varenius opened 1 year ago

varenius commented 1 year ago

A standard lab is to measure the continuum of the Sun with 2.5 MHz bandwidth at 1410 MHz (or some other bw, freq). For this we need to be able to track the Sun, preferably with relative az/el offsets. An algoritm for calculating the Suns position, in ecliptic and equatorial coordinates (the latter from which we can already compute horizontal coordinates) with sufficient precision (about 1 arcmin) can be found at https://aa.usno.navy.mil/faq/sun_approx. This could be implemented to yield az,el coordinates for the Sun.

In addition, for solar observing, it would be good to allow offset relative to the tracking center, in az/el, so that one can e.g. follow the Sun + 5 deg azimuth.

varenius commented 1 year ago

Functions to obtain the Sun's position in az/el (needed for this ticket) was added in https://github.com/centowen/salsa/commit/09b9e492ec8b21798e478682ffe5d3620e0e29ec.