George,
When you pick a date/time, I can set the Zoom up on our account to get around the free versions limitations.
BTW, reading your comment about the zero % events and small travel distances was a smack-myself-in-the-head moment.? Makes sense...
Steve
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Hi Roxanne (& All):
Great that you are "consistently getting results". ...Tho you can't get much with a Mag 10 limit.
I agree. Probably best to do a Zoom session at this point.
Let me look over the weather forecast and pick an evening that seems to be cloudy for (most) all of us. I'll then suggest a time and if I don't get many "please reschedule" requests, we'll have a Zoom then. I'll host - I have a free Zoom account so I'll use that - but we might(?) need to do 40-minutes / 20 min break / then a 2nd 40-minutes. That's been my past experience. 40-minutes burns by too quick.
For the record tho........ There's no question, and no way around it....... Occult4 takes a good chunk of time to complete a Search.
As a general rule I start a Search running then attend to some mundane task in life that screams to be taken care of, and plan on getting back to the computer in 30 minutes to an hour. After starting Occult4, it's a good time to go out grocery shopping (or whatever). When you get back, you ~should~ (chuckle) have results.
Before your above post I tested both of my computers that I have Occult4 on - for speed, etc -- partially for my own curiosity.
I set my Search criteria as you see in the attached image. That being........
* I used GAIA 16 as the star source catalog
* I excluded all events outside of 900km of my location
* Mag drop - Exclude if less than 0.12
* Target Star - Exclude stars fainter than mag 15.7
* Taxonomy = All
* Exclude asteroids smaller and 3km
* Exclude if Duration less than 0.1 sec
Occult4 tells me any search I do will then include 142,537 from the MPCorb database which meet the above criteria
Note: _AS_ you run a Search, if you see something [briefly] appear in the "Search results" [white] box, that event will get stored in memory - ie., added to the events Occult4 finds. However, that doesn't mean that it will appear in the final "List & Display". If you have "Filter" criteria in the "List & Display" the events that Occult4 initially finds will get [further] filtered by the criteria set in "List & Display" BEFORE they are displayed. ?
So.... I have Occult4 on 2 computers - both have the same (above) Search criteria set. The computers are:
Win 10 Home edition -- 3.4Ghz / i3 / 4 Gig RAM (max) / 1 spinning Hard Drive / Purchased Jan 2012 (Thus an "Older" computer)
Win 11 Home edition -- 2.1GHz / i7 / 32 Gig RAM / SSD HD for OS & Programs / 1 spinning HD for Data / Purchased November 2022
FYI.... I do Searches for 1 night at a time (!!!!)
Win 11 - Takes 17.5 minutes to do a 1-night search (found 2,361 events in my test)
Win 10 - Is 1/5th of the way complete in 17.5 minutes
Win 10 - Takes ~55 minutes to do a 1-night search (found 2,361 events in my test)
Regards output.......... See the attached image for how I usually configure my "List & Display". The main criteria I often vary is the "Distance of site from path". From a test run I did, as I varied the distance, here's the number of events I get:
NO Filters (uncheck "visible from") - 2,361
250km - 320
80km - 109
50km - 75
20km - 45
8km - 23
2km - 13
1km - 9
NOTE: Depending on your Filter setting in "List & Display", you may see events of "0% Probability". You may think, "I don't need to see those!". However.......
Recently GAIA astrometric data has been incorporated into generating ""some"" orbital elements....... This has had the effect of tremendously shrinking the 1-sigma bounds - on some asteroids. In short, Occult4 may now generate an event where you are outside the main path by only a couple miles(!), and you will get a "0% Probability" listing !!!
If you are capable of going Mobile (or have other nearby observatories you observe from), just moving 3 miles or so will then change your Probability from 0% to 80% !!! So you should inspect ALL events that Occult4 lists. This is also why you should set your "Distance of site from path" to at least 50km.
There's actually reason to keep your search at 250km initially but to explain will take too much typing.
Yes... I'm tired of typing (and somewhat wondering if it's doing much good).
I'll schedule a Zoom soon..............
Happy Shadows,
G
PS: Had clouds cover a 94% chance event last night - moved over 20 seconds or so before the predicted time. Ugh!