TNORECOV

Name

tnorecov

Purpose

Real-time planning and field selection tool for TNO survey observations.

Description

This is a non-blocking widget tool. It expects to read a file with
a list of object coordinates and other information. The name of the
file is not arbitrary. The root of the file name must be a 6-digit
encoding of the time for which the positions in the file are calculated
for. YYMMDD (year, month, day) is thus required and the time is assumed
to be 0h UT on that day. The suffix of the file name is normally '.dat',
but this is not a requirement but rather the initial value for the file
filter.
Files of the proper format are generated for each day on that day and can
be found at http://www.boulder.swri.edu/~buie/kbo/recov. The files in this
area are somewhat self-explanatory. You can load the file of interest
using the "Open" option under the "File" menu.
There is a second file that is written as you tag fields with their
observation date and time. This file is named YYMMDD.tim (same root as
the positions file that was read at the start) and is
written to the directory where you were when you started the program.
This file records the start times of the two visits to the field.
You must provide the y/m/d as well as h:m:s in the time field. Here
are a few example lines from observed fields:
2060 2000/07/28_23:48:45 2000/07/29_02:38:50
20000 2000/07/28_23:41:58 2000/07/29_02:33:09
95FB21 2000/07/28_23:33:50
00CR105 2000/07/28_23:55:46 2000/07/29_02:45:07
If a field is not present, it hasn't yet been observed. If a field has
only been observed once you'll only see one time (like 95FB21 above).
Because the tool is non-blocking, you can continue to use IDL normally
from the command line while this tool is running. But, only one
copy of this tool is permitted at any given time.

Calling Sequence

tnorecov

Inputs

Optional Input Parameters

Keyword Input Parameters

AMCRIT - Airmass limit, default=2.5
DB - Name of database for extra information. This is expected to
be the DES database in structure and content. Default is
to not look to any database.
DT - Offset from true time in hours (default=0), this is used
mostly for testing.
MIN1YERR - This sets the threshold of interesting objects as defined by
their error 1 year into the future. Any object with a total
error less than this threshold will not appear as a candidate
for observation. The default is 20 arcsec. If you wish to
turn this feature off set MIN1YERR to 0.
OBSFILE - Name (including path) of the file containing the observatory
code information. Default is obscode.dat and must reside
in your IDL_PATH. This file is included in my library so
you normally don't need to worry about this.
OBSCODE - Observatory id code, default is '688' (Lowell Observatory)

Outputs

Keyword Output Parameters

Common Blocks

Side Effects

Restrictions

Only one instance at a time is allowed.

Procedure

Modification History

Written by Marc W. Buie, Lowell Observatory, 2000/07/30
2001/03/12, MWB, numerous changes including online help files.
2001/03/14, MWB, changed for new format of support file.
2001/06/09, MWB, object coordinates updated for changing time. Make the
widget independent of the working directory of the main IDL
window.
2001/06/19, MWB, added Show Object Info on Tools menu item.
2001/10/09, MWB, updated for new .[s]dat file format
2002/03/06, MWB, added 'Find Object' tool and 'Set Date/Time' tool.
2002/09/09, MWB, added support for string obscode values
2004/11/14, MWB, read two new fields on .dat files (error and error+1y)
added MIN1YERR keyword
changed "find object" so that = is optional