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Automated Register of Declination and Right Ascension        {v.1.0.2 alpha}

DIGITAL SETTING CIRCLES SOFTWARE

·.:· Last version 19/03/06. Alpha version in developpment.

R.A.D.AR. Icono  Abstract ::..:..:....:::.::.:..:::..::..:.:::.::.::.:::...:.:::..::::::..:..:....:::.::.:..:::..::..:.::..:::.::::.::.:::...

R.A.D.AR. software has been developped in order to satisfy the basic needs of orientation across the night sky of those amateur astronomers who own an equatorial mounted telescope but who do not own an autonomous computerized system (GO-TO).

This software has been though to be used as a Digital Setting Circles system, made from the circuits and optical sensors of a mechanical mouse. To construct this encoder you can have a look to these links, which provide detailed information about its manufacture.

The mouse chosen must be a serial mouse and must follow the Microsoft's communication protocol (most of them do), in other words:

Most of the new laptops do not provide a serial communication port, if this is your situation (like mine) it will be necessary to use an adaptor and connect the serial mouse to an USB port. It is important to notify that R.A.D.AR. will not work with USB mice, it will just with serial mice that can be switched to an USB port with an adequate adaptor.

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This program is, basically, an interface capable to adcquire data obtained from an encoder adapted to an equatorial mount, and send them to a planetarium type program where visualize easily the current telescope's aiming.

The planetarium program that has been chosen to interact with R.A.D.AR. has been Cartes du Ciel (Sky Charts) by several reasons:

Cartes du Ciel already has an interface to manage data adquisition for most of the computerized systems of current mounts (specially those which comply with the ASCOM platform standards), but it is not implemented any kind of support for home-made encoders built from mice optical sensors.

R.A.D.AR. has been developed from this basis and in the belief that it will be worthy and useful for those amateur astronomers with chinese mounts to dispose of such a simple but efficient tool to identify deep-sky objects.

The interface is quite simple to use and relatively straight-forward, you can even find a user's guide within the downloads area and a Help file.

Main window

This program offers the following features:

R.A.D.AR. Icono  Downloads ::..:..:....:::.::.:..:::..::..:.:::.::.::.:::...:.::..:..:....:::..:::.::::..:..:::..::..:.:::.::.::.:::.....

You can download the R.A.D.AR. v.1.0. software from here. (RADAR.exe 432 kb) ( Windows 9X/2000/Me/XP)   (19/03/06)

You can download the User's Guide to R.A.D.AR. v.1.0. from here.  (Manual_RADAR.pdf)   (19/03/06)

You can download from this website the Sky Charts 2.7x software by Patrick Chevalley.

 

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Construction of the Home-Made Encoder

http://www.geocities.com/cwillemoes/encoder.htm

http://www.amsky.com/atm/accessories/mouse/mouse.html

http://terra.es/personal/pulgar/motoriza/motoriza.htm

Similar Software

SCOPE:    http://www.efn.org/~mbartels/

    The classic program by Mel Bartels for Dobson telescopes. It runs under MS-DOS and uses it's own planetarium.

CIDRA:    http://terra.es/personal/pulgar/

    DSC program of similar characteristics to R.A.D.AR. which uses it's own planetarium.

ENCODER:    http://www.geocities.com/cwillemoes/encoder.htm

    DSC program which runs under MS-DOS and requires 2 computers to work, one of them executing ENCODER and the other one the planetarium.

 

Amateur Astronomy

http://www.asociacionhubble.org/index.php (Asociación Astronómica Hubble)

http://personales.ya.com/aademadrid/(Agrupación Astronómica de Madrid)

http://www.sondasespaciales.com/ (Sondas Espaciales)

http://asaaf.fis.ucm.es/AstroMad/ (AstroMad)

http://www.skyandtelescope.com/ (Sky & Telescope)

http://www.astronomia-e.com/ (Tribuna de Astronomía)

http://es.geocities.com/profetasoy2003/P2P_Astronomia.htm (P2P Astronomía)

 

Philips ToUCam II Pro (SC) Modification

You can download the Steve Chamber's modification of the webcam ToUCam II Pro in this pdf by Pany and Jomlop from the Asociación Astronómica Hubble of Martos (Jaén).

 

 

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