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Changes for version 0.061_05 - 2014-03-26

  • In t/tle_json.t, work around problem that occurs when JSON::XS encodes a number in a locale that uses a comma as the decimal point, such as 'de_DE.UTF-8'. Make a note of this in Astro::Coord::ECI::TLE, since there is nothing I can do in my code to actually fix the problem.

Changes for version 0.061_04 - 2014-03-25

  • Add diagnostics to t/tle_json.t, and robustify, to try to track down sporadic failures.

Changes for version 0.061_03 - 2014-03-24

  • The 'unpack' built-in does not default to $_ as the buffer to unpack under Perls before 5.10.

Changes for version 0.061_02 - 2014-03-23

  • Have Astro::Coord::ECI::TLE magnitude() method set the station's time. Correct logic for building the fold_case() utliity subroutine under Perls before 5.16.

Changes for version 0.061_01 - 2014-03-20

  • Computation of (perhaps very) approximate magnitudes for satellites is now supported. Changes to support this include:
    • A magnitude() method on all classes that represent satellites;
    • An intrinsic_magnitude attribute (defaulting to undef) on Astro::Coord::ECI::TLE objects;
    • Default intrinsic_magnitude to 7 on Astro::Coord::ECI::TLE::Iridium objects;
    • A canned table of intrinsic magnitudes in Astro::Coord::ECI::TLE which includes most of the objects in the Celestrak visual list, with magnitudes from Mike McCants' mcnames.zip and vsnames.zip files;
    • Support in the Astro::Coord::ECI::TLE parse() method to set the magnitude of satellites that are in the table;
    • Static method magnitude_table() on Astro::Coord::ECI::TLE to maintain the canned magnitude table;
    • Modify the Astro::Coord::ECI::Sun magnitude() method to take an observing station argument (which is ignored) to be consistent with the same-named Astro::Coord::ECI::TLE method.
  • The precess() and precess_dynamical() methods now do nothing to objects set to Earth-fixed coordinates. Previously they were converted to Ecliptic (and therefore inertial) coordinates, which manifested as a bug when the observing station was an attribute of a star. Support new (to us) Space Track JSON keys FILE, OBJECT_TYPE, ORDINAL and ORIGINATOR with same-named (except for being lower case) attributes. Method body_type() now returns the 'object_type' attribute if that is defined. If not it computes its return from the object name, like it always has.

Documentation

Predict satellite passes over an observer.
Overview of Astro::Coord::ECI and friends

Modules

Manipulate geocentric coordinates
Provide common methods without multiple inheritance.
Compute the position of the Moon.
Compute the position of a star.
Compute the position of the Sun.
Compute satellite locations using NORAD orbit propagation models
Compute behavior of Iridium satellites
Represent a set of data for the same ID.
Utility routines for astronomical calculations