obsplan

It's an observation plan tool. Mainly focus on radio telescope. Will update optical telescope later.

Requirement

Package requirement

• sys
• argparse
• numpy
• matplotlib
• astropy
• astroplan (necessary once finish future developement)

Other files

Telescope

telescope.csv stored locations of telescopes which are not included in the astropy. You can check the astropy stored telescope names by EarthLocation.get_site_names().

If you want to add unknown/new telescope into the telescope csv file:

• available telescope: atca, parkes, mopra, gmrt... (lowercase name)
• lat and lon unit of degree
• height unit of meter

Target(s)

You can input the target coordinates via command line using --target. Alternatively you can write the source information into source.csv, format as

• coordinates
• unit (deg or hms)
• name (use as plot label)

Calibrators

There is also a calibrator.csv to store the calibrator information. Same format as source.csv.

Only 1934-638 and 0823-500 are available in current database (two standard calibrator for ATCA). Furthure development will be needed to actually select the proper calibrator. Currently it will plot all calibrators within the database.

Those files should be in the same folder with obslst.py. You can also specify the file folder use --telefile (telescope csv) --sourcefile (target csv) --calfile (calibrator csv)

Quick Usage

Example 1:

Input target coordinates, expected observing time in UTC, and expected observing length in hours.

python obslst.py --target '05:23:48 -71:25:52' --time '2022-03-20 12:00:00' --length 12

You can also input two/multiple targets

python obslst.py --target '05:23:48 -71:25:52' '00:58:00 -23:54:49' --time '2022-03-20 12:00:00' --length 12

Example 2:

Read the target coordinates from source.csv. Will plot all sources listed in the csv file.

python obslst.py --time '2022-03-20 12:00:00' --length 12

To-do list

1. can select calibrator from command line
2. add other plots (LST range, parallactic angle, azimuth, optical etc.)