Conventions

• All angles or coordinates are stored internally in radians
• All angles or coordinates mostly are presented to the user in degrees (sexagesimal format for coordinates, degrees for distances)
• double must be used as storage
• dates: use ISO8601 format as external format for presentation, Julian days as internal format.

Use cases

JmmcAsproProjectPlots : sample plots

Observability of a source (or list of sources) for a given interferometer

Inputs	User format	internal format
Star name	anything
Star coordinate	retrieved from NAME with Simabd, or entered by user (Ra,Dec only?)	RAJ2000,DEJ2000
Observing site location	selection of one supported observatory	observatory reference
Date of observation ( or period of time )	like DDMMYYYYHHMM	(Modified) Julian Day ( precise up to the second )

Plot outputs: How to represent the observability of a list of star onto multi-telescope?
The observability of star is a series of time intervals where the star is visible from a location at a given date. This serie is telescope/station dependent (since there may be different horizons). Time intervals are segments of a time-line, at each point of which can be attached a list of properties: azimuth, elevation, airmass, atmospheric refraction, distance from sun, moon or another object (down to binary orbits!). The grouping into segments is meaningful. For multi-telescope observability, the observability is the intersection of all observability intervals.

Is the source visible in the sky ?

Is the source over the horizon ?

outputs	Internal/User	Format
celestial coordinates	Internal	HA / delta ?? units TBC TBD
over the horizon	User	boolean

What is the AirMass value ?

GD note: below: nothing to do with airmass. airmass is just proportional to zeta, where zeta is the zenital angle (or more complicated formula if spherical atmosphere). Humidity x airmass give optical absorption. Seeing is proportional to airmass (TBC).

Inputs	User format	internal format
Seeing	choice or value ?	TBD
Humidity / Temperature...	choice or value ?	TBD

outputs	Internal/User	Format
AirMass	User	double

What is the best method to get the airmass value?

Where are the sun / moon ?

Inputs	User format	internal format
twilight constraints	angle degrees (ASTRO/NAVAL/CIVIL)	double radians

outputs	Internal/User	Format
sunrise sunset moonrise moonset moonphase moonIllumination	User	DateTime couples

Est-ce qu'il faut gerer d'autre planetes sources lumineuses ??? Quelles doit etre la precision pour les ephemerides? qq minutes

Is the star still visible given to a shadowing ???

Inputs	User format	internal format
environment shadowing ( telescopes, mountains, building ....)	angle d'obstruction ( de 0 a 90 degres) en fonction de l'azimuth (repere a definir)	couples of Altitude / Azimuth points
telescope(s) min elevation	angle degree	angle radians

What is the formulae of the observability given to the whole previous results?

A-t'on besoin de calculer l'AirMass par station? NON Est-ce que la voute celeste est la meme pour toutes les stations a un meme moment? NON a cause de l'horizon

S'arrete-ton des le premier critere mauvais ou doit on faire un bilan de pertes...( par ex: une mauvaise airmass compensee par un configuration optique avec moins de pertes) Qu"entends-tu par "s'arrêter?"

Comment gere-t'on l'observalité d'une liste d'etoiles? Est simplement la juxtaposition des resultats independants ou y-a t'il des contraintes de gestion par groupe? Prévoir une gestion par groupe, sans l'approfondir. Laisser la liaison entre les membres d'un groupe possible comme dans un dessin où on groupe des éléments graphiques, sans plus.

Modelling of a source from a given interferometer

JmmcAsproTargetModel : dedicated twiki topic

Various informations

Station Coordinates

The software handles station coordinates as described in the OIFITS (see OI_ARRAY table description). The software accepts only the OIFITS values. All conversions to OIFITS values must be done externally.

VLTI configuration

Eso defines the coordinates in an proprietary maner. The right way to get the right informations is to read the data from an AMBER oifits ( may be generated by ASPRO ).

CHARA configuration

Chara expresses the station coordinates in the same format as OIFITS. Use ASPRO values.

Java astronomy libraries

JSkyCalc = Java version of skycalc
AstroLib
URLToBeDefined)?topicparent=Jmmc/Software.JmmcAsproProjectConception;nowysiwyg=0" rel="nofollow" title="PAL projet astrogrid (utilisé par APES et topcat) (this topic does not yet exist; you can create it)">PAL projet astrogrid (utilisé par APES et topcat)

Verifier : conversion coordonnees et ephemeride (au moins soleil et lune)

Various libraries

• Java Analysis studio 3 : advanced plot library (svg support)
• SvgKit : svg generation from javascript
• SGT : Scientific Graphics Toolkit
• JFreeChart 1.0 : free 100% Java chart library (svg, pdf)
• Page perso pour des applications numeriques fft matrices....

Various documentation

• MIDI Optical Path Differences and Phases

S'il faut developper une librairie graphique: http://www.siggraph.org/education/materials/HyperVis/percept/visrules.htm

Main ASPRO functionnalities compared to alternates tools

• APES

Observability plot

In contrary to APES, ASPRO is not a planetarium (planetarium: has animations/colors, and tries to mimic precisely the visual aspect of the sky).
The main information consist in the observability timestamps of a target of a list of targets i.e. a simple list of time intervals could be enough (like the observation scheduler).
However, beyond this minimal view the user should have details in a pop up or a contextual window (target rise/set, elevation).
The user could add / remove / hide a target that is present in the plot

UV coverage plot

Use the Model Fitting GUI to define & display model parameters and associate a model per target instead of a single model for the current version of ASPRO.
This plot should be displayed when a target is selected on the Observability plot. The UV tracks are ellipse segments. They have the same properties as for the observability time-line: each point can be tagged with an number of properties (in fact, all the properties of OI_VIS and OI_VIS2). Some properties associate 3 telescopes (OI_T3), and thus 3 uv tracks. Leave a possibility to associate more than 3 telescopes (intensity closure associates 4).

Other items

• APES 'Select a baseline' widget has an interesting interferometer representation but it's less important. An expert mode without any configuration constraints seems a good idea
• APES Paf files are specific to the PRIMA instrument and can not be reused. Only Observing blocks (OB) should be considered for ASPRO. See OBX example file: CAL-lam_gru_PCN_MRK23.obx (this is a typical parameter file for preparing observations with AMBER/VLTI).
• VMT is focused on a target model and has no observability feature
• Dealing with aspro setting files is an important feature to keep the user session / history
• Investigate plotting libraries that provide plot interactivity (batik supports svg format with javascript support ...)

1. refresh plot with new data when the user changes anything in widgets
2. interactive plot : the user can click on the plot to get information (predefined) or run other widgets

Dev Task list

This section gathers TODO or discussed development tasks or enhancements and their status (pending, done or postponed) according to version 0.3b8 (18 may 2010) :

Source definition :

• define manually a target : custom widget to enter coordinates and required magnitudes for a given instrument : done (added an optional star name - no magnitude yet)
• SimBad widget : simbad can return several query results if the search criteria is not sufficiently restrictive : in such case, the results should be displayed to the user to let him choose among targets.

Baseline definition :

• VLTI : allow an advanced user to enter manually the list of stations (E0 A0 H0) instead of choosing a valid configuration for the corresponding period
• CHARA : how to associate a beam to a station (V1 = E1, V2=S2 ...) ? this contributes to the OPD and it is used in CHARA OB.

Observability plot

• trou du zenith ?
• transit indication : the plot should include a mark (or the time) at the exact time of transit (zenital angle = 0, elevation has its maximum value ) : done (added a diamond mark)
• elevation marks : like aspro1, indicate the elevation of the target with ticks (20,40,60 ...) : done
• moon information : illumination fraction, moon rise/set, check the distance of a target with the moon is higher than 10°
• interactive UI : the user should have details in a pop up or a contextual window with azimuth / elevation, airmass, atmospheric refraction, distance from sun, moon : postponed (technical issues)

UV coverage plot

• display the legend of the model image i.e. the palette scale
• alternate units to MLambda like meter or arcsec-1. In such case do not display the UV segments representing the the wave length bandpath
• indicate the UT time corresponding to UV points (Alain) in a pop up (UT / LST / HA)
• custom uv coverage : user defined points = list of (date / UT time) in order to reproduce an observation made at different date/time

Model Editor

• add missing models (Gaussian, ring, Limb-Darkened Disk) - see JmmcAsproTargetModel : done
• add a button to normalize the total of flux_weight to 1 : done

Export to OI Fits File (high priority)

export to OI Fits file the visibilities for a given target model : pending

Export to Observing blocks (high priority)

• VLTI OB : done for AMBER and MIDI instruments
• CHARA OB : pending

OIFitsViewer

This component will be a generic OIFits file viewer to plot visibilities that must be interoperable with aspro 2, LITpro ...
A new JMMC module named OITools is in development :

• It only supports loading entirely an OIFits file into an object memory model and validation (OIVal like)
• Saving an OIFits file is coming soon

It uses the nom.tam fits library from HEASARC instead of eso JFits library.

Other items

• interferometer map with station positions and selected base lines : done
• user preferences with color palette editor, default target model : started