Introduction to RoboOrbits

What is RoboOrbits

RoboOrbits is a Voyager automaton that manages data relating to dynamic targets such as comets, asteroids and small celestial bodies.

They are dynamic targets as their position in the sky in terms of RA and DEC varies considerably over time as they themselves have complex orbits.

RoboOrbits is able to retrieve the list of objects and the data of their orbits directly from the web and automatically feed its databases and make them available to Voyager users.

The user will thus be able to carry out advanced searches of the data and obtain the position of the object in zero time starting from the stored orbital data.

The databases can be updated at any time, the operation will be more or less long depending on the type of object.

Currently the types of managed objects are Comets and Asteroids.

In addition to performing searches, RoboOrbits has been integrated into Voyager sequences, so it is possible to establish dynamic targets by omitting the coordinates RA/DEC and make the sequence calculate them during execution thus always obtaining the updated position of the object. Actually the sequence with dynamic target allows you to customize the type of pointing of the object in terms of updating frequency of the position in the sky according to the user's needs

(for example researcher user or astrophotographer user etc)

Important Note! Voyager does not ship pre-data RoboOrbits, its installation databases do not contain any object references. The data must be downloaded from the internet and transferred to the dedicated database through some automated procedures whose duration depends on the type of object. The operation can vary from a few seconds to a few tens of minutes depending on the speed of the internet bandwidth and the computing power of the processor

How to use RoboOrbits

You can use RoboOrbits from whatever place in Voyager modules and applications you will found a button with caption "Comet" or "Comets" or "Asteroid" or "Asteroids".

Actually the search is available in:

• OnTheFly section
  • 
• Sequence Configuration
  • 
• Variuos DragScript Blocks like Sequence Override or Dinamic Target checking
  • 
  • 
  • DO IF ALTITUDE BETWEEN DYNAMIC TARGET
  • 
  • DO IF AZIMUTH BETWEEN DYNAMIC TARGET
  • 
  • DO IF HA BETWEEN DYNAMIC TARGET
  • 
  • GOTO DYNAMIC TARGET
  • 
  • PRECISE POINTING DYNAMIC TARGET
  • 

This will open various finder windows form where to perform the search. The dynamic targets will be searched directly in the RoboOrbits database and not online, the RoboOrbits databases must therefore already have been fed with the data downloaded through the appropriate procedures.

This is an example of the search form for dynamic targets of the Asteroid type connected to RoboOrbits:

Important Note! RoboOrbits cannot be used in RoboClip. This is because RoboClip can only contain Static and not Dynamic Targets while RoboOrbits contains only Dynamic Targets

Important Note! Currently using RoboOrbits is not possible in the Web Dashboard. There will be developments in this direction in the future.

Why use RoboOrbits

RoboOrbits is the only way to have the automatic calculation of the orbits starting from the code/number/name/designation of the dynamic objects in Voyager. Otherwise it will be necessary to use RA/DEC of the Target calculated exactly at the moment in which you want to use it and it will not be possible to carry out complex flow controls in DragScript for dynamic objects.