Possible missing events for NALowMag and IBEROCC
Hi All,
Thanks to Steve Messner who first reported this problem and then helped in the investigation, I discovered that is it possible new installations of OW (done in the past 2 months) to be missing events from the NALowMag and the IBEROCC feeds. The missing events would be from now until end of July and only users who have either installed/reinstalled OW recently or have purged their DB recently would be affected.
If you know or you suspect that you are missing events from those two feeds in OW please do the following in OW:
1) Go to Configuration -> Prediction Feeds -> select the feed (NA Low Mag or IBEROCC) -> right click -> Purge database 2) Once OW has restarted run a Synchronisation to retrieve the events again
The actual problem was on the backend in OWC and is an example of an issue lurking around in the new system. Many thanks to Steve for reporting this and for his patience and help during the investigation.
If you spot any other oddities please do report them to me so they get fixed quicker and affect fewer people!
Cheers, Hristo.
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Re: Result edit is grayed out
Hi Hristo,
Yes, this is the problem i am experiencing.? There is a delay of
say three days, but then the OW result is fixed.? I ask on behave
of an observer who was able to delete his position rather than
leave the wrong tick mark colour.? The report sent to Planoccult
is fine, and confirmed as a MISS.
?I have bcc'ed? the observer who could contact you off- group if
he would like the report reinstated.
Here are the OW graphics with and without the marked position
Without:
With incorrect result
Many thanks
Tim
On 15/06/2021 02:03, hristo_dpavlov via
groups.io wrote:
toggle quoted message
Show quoted text
Hi Tim,
There is a period of time after the event when you can report
and update the report in OW. I need to check what the period is
(probably around 3 days). Is this the issue you are reporting?
If initially an 'Observed, report to follow' report is sent,
then you can update the report any time in the future. Once
updated you have 3 days to correct.
All this was put in place so people cannot acientally change a
reported observation.
I can also update the report for you if you tell me the event
and the report.
I'll think about how to improve this process so it is less
annoying when you genuinely want to update the report after many
days.
But the important question is: Is this the problem you are
experiencing?
Hristo.
I difficulty arose recently when a result was marked as
positive, but on further analysis several days later, it
was shown to be a MISS
However we were unable to update the result, since the
option to re-enter the revised result was grayed out.?
Is there a procedure whereby the the result can be
changed ?
Thanks - Tim
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Re: Result edit is grayed out
Hi Tim,
There is a period of time after the event when you can report and update the report in OW. I need to check what the period is (probably around 3 days). Is this the issue you are reporting?
If initially an 'Observed, report to follow' report is sent, then you can update the report any time in the future. Once updated you have 3 days to correct.
All this was put in place so people cannot acientally change a reported observation.
I can also update the report for you if you tell me the event and the report.
I'll think about how to improve this process so it is less annoying when you genuinely want to update the report after many days.
But the important question is: Is this the problem you are experiencing?
Hristo. On Tuesday, June 15, 2021, 07:44:42 AM GMT+10, Tim Haymes via groups.io <tvh.observatory@...> wrote:
I difficulty arose recently when a result was marked as positive, but on further analysis several days later, it was shown to be a MISS However we were unable to update the result, since the option to re-enter the revised result was grayed out.? Is there a procedure whereby the the result can be changed ? Thanks - Tim
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Result edit is grayed out
I difficulty arose recently when a result was marked as positive, but on further analysis several days later, it was shown to be a MISS
However we were unable to update the result, since the option to re-enter the revised result was grayed out.? Is there a procedure whereby the the result can be changed ?
Thanks - Tim
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OW Plot + Stations now in OWC
Hi all,
I have released the first version of adding the OW plot and station info into OWC. Here is an example:
(note you might need to press Shift + Refresh if you have opened this event before)
At the moment the only information is the station name and similarly to OW if you hover the mouse over the station indicator there will be a tooltip with the extra info.
I will be adding weather forecast + cloud cover color coding as well as reports for past observations.
It is possible that not all OWC events will be linked successfully by OWC so if you see an event with stations in OW but not showing them up in OWC, please let me know which is the event.
Also note that this is only working for events sourced by OWC and as currently IOTA Occultations is not, this will not be working for IOTA Occultation events or for Personal Predictions.
Hristo.
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The MAX7456 IC is no longer in production, hence the Sparkfun OSD module
is no longer available. It may be available from Alibaba.com
What do you suggest for displaying the timing data as a successor to the
IOTA-VTI?
May be possible with a suitable drone flight controller
Best wishes, Jerry
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Re: [OWCloud] OW 5 fails to install, Windows 10 Pro
Hi Ted,
To install OW from scratch in a new directory, follow up the steps from
If you have a corrupted installation (which I understand as OW is there or almost there, but does not start) then you can do the flowing:
- Delete OccultWatcher.exe - Right click OWUpdate.exe and choose "Run as administrator". You may need to tell your Antivirus software that this is safe to do. You can temporarily disable your AV software during the install.
If OWUpdate.exe doesn't start (it is corrupted) then you can download OWUpdate.zip from the above link and unzip in place, then run it.
Let me know if this worked for you. If not can you please explain how is your installation corrupted or what errors are you getting.
Hristo.
On Thursday, June 3, 2021, 6:24:30 AM GMT+10, Ted Swift <tjswift@...> wrote:
My installation of OW 4.7(?) got corrupted while updating. My attempts to reinstall either OW 4.X or 5 have failed. Hristo, where is the latest OW 5 install package? I'm dead in the water.
-Ted S
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Re: OW 5.0.2 Update - mangled event details
Hi All,
There have been reports off OW showing up mangled event details after the latest upgrade.
If this happens to you, please resize the main form horizontally as much as you can (or press the button to make it full screen). One the issue has been fixed by ding this you should be able to resize it back to your original size. The issue should not re-appear after the next restart.
Let me know if this is not the case and the issue persists for you.
Hristo.
On Sunday, May 30, 2021, 2:04:43 PM GMT+10, Hristo Pavlov <hristo_dpavlov@...> wrote:
Hi All,
I have released an update of OW today.
It contains two new feeds called "Observation Campaigns" and "Community Tags".
The "Observation Campaigns" feed, as the name suggests, will contain events from special campaigns. At the moment the only campaign is the 'Slow Rotators' but I expect new campaigns to be added in the future and possibly I could migrate the feeds under the Lucky Star umbrella to also be part of this feed.
The "Community Tags" feed contains events that could be tagged by any one on OWC using one of the existing community tags. At the moment the only tag is 'Suspected Moons' for asteroids, as the name suggests, with suspected moons that need confirmation. If anyone wants to tag events with different community tags - these can be added.
The main difference between the two feeds is that "Observation Campaigns" will have a web-page with information about the campaign and the campaign will be more organized i.e. observations will need to be reported not only to the IOTA regional coordinators, but also to the people running the campaign, and those observations would typically be used in one or multiple papers, that will be the result of the campaign.
The Community Tags feed on the other hand include events of a particular scientific interest identified by out community, but there is no campaign associated with them. This is more of an experimental feed that I hope will help more people to get involved in identifying and tagging interesting events, for a particular reason, and also helping potential observers having to choose between a large number of potential targets, to know exactly how their observation of those events will be useful, outside of the standard astrometry and shape and size determination that is the main result of all other observations not included in a campaign feed.
After OW is updated, if you don't run OW as an administrator account, then make sure that you manually restart it after the update. In this release I still have not address the problem that when running OW as a non-admin account, after the update OW will be restarted with the admin account, and because OWs event database is stored per user, the events after the restart will be different. This is manually fixed by stopping OW and starting it again with your current user account. I hope to address this issue in a next OW update.
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Re: "Maximum active number of stations" error
Hi David,
The 300 limit is in a running 60 day window so stations will automatically clear up and become available again as time goes on.
Hristo
On Monday, May 31, 2021, 05:53:07 AM GMT+10, David Oesper via groups.io <oesper@...> wrote:
Hi Hristo, Thanks for taking the time to explain the advantages of OW Cloud, and there's no question this is a huge step forward for all of us. Thanks for all your work on OW and OW Cloud and I will look into setting up a tag in the near future. One question about the current setup. Am I permanently blocked from publishing additional events after hitting the "maximum active number of stations" error, or after several days of not publishing anything, will I automatically be allowed to publish again? I do appreciate the 'Add event for follow up' option and I am currently using that now to help me schedule my observing strategy for each clear night. Thanks again, Dave
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Re: "Maximum active number of stations" error
I am in awe of David's commitment!? Well done.??
However I have one comment/question.? In a previous reply, Hristo wrote,?
"I also see that you always announce a High commitment to observe but you said that you end up skipping, so the value of High commitment that you are using does not seem to indicate your actual commitment."
Actually, I have always interpreted the new "Count on Me" indicator to indicate the observer's (self-determined) likelihood of getting a successful observation, not simply an announcement to "Count on me to observe."??
I believe the best use of the "Count on me" indicator is for beginners who wish to get started in observing?to register their site, along with the indication of their own perception of their likelihood of success.? ?I always encourage beginners to head for a spot close to the center line to maximize their chances of getting a positive.? However, by specifying "Low or inexperienced" for the indicator they telegraph to the rest of the community that no one should feel they have to avoid the beginning observer's chord for fear of duplication.??
When I first got started I knew my chances of success were low, as I had a lot to learn about the equipment, finding the field, timing, etc.? ?I remember that I didn't? even want to announce my near-center-line sites on OW for fear someone would actually think I'd get good data and avoid my chord.? (Ha!? That took many, many attempts...)? Then my (likely) subsequent failure would leave the center line uncovered.??
With the introduction of the "Count on me" indicator, it is now possible for beginners (or people experimenting with new equipment or techniques) to announce their site in a way that does not discourage other, more experienced observers from covering the same chord.? ?At least to me, this seems like a good use of the feature.
Ted B.
On Sat, May 29, 2021 at 9:17 PM hristo_dpavlov via <hristo_dpavlov= [email protected]> wrote:
Hi Dave,
The idea of announcing a station is to show others a commitment to observe and if you cannot observe all the events you have signed up for, then I would suggest that you apply additional filtering and you sign up for less events so you don't exceed the limit of 300 stations for 60 days.
OW has an option to 'Add event for follow up' which will still add the event to your 'My events' but no station will be announced and others will not know that you may review this event later and decide to observe. You can always sign up for the event a day or so before the actual event if you seem determined to observe it.
I also see that you always announce a High commitment to observe but you said that you end up skipping, so the value of High commitment that you are using does not seem to indicate your actual commitment.
Happy to hear the views of other observers on the subject but I am thinking that you should not be submitting stations for so many events if you often don't end up observing them and therefore will likely not need to be able to submit more than 300 stations per 60 days.
Hristo.
On Sunday, May 30, 2021, 1:50:18 PM GMT+10, David Oesper via <oesper= [email protected]> wrote:
Hi Hristo,
Since David Herald allowed Occult to filter predictions by probability percent (a request from myself and others), I am adding all events with a probability > 1% where my observatory is in the predicted shadow in addition to all events where my MPCOrb or JPL Horizons probability is 10% or greater. Add to that a few long duration and bright star events with probability > 1%, and the number of potential events per night can sometimes exceed more than 5 per night. I find it helpful when planning each night's observing session to have several events to choose from, as sometimes there are two or more events during the same hour, for example, which makes an efficient use of my observing time. Of course, I always try to observe the events with more than one observer signed up, but many of the ones I publish where I am the only observer, I end up skipping and report as a "no observation". It hasn't helped my observation percentage that most of the past two months have been cloudy here, but at least I am always prepared when it is clear.
Thanks much,
Dave
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Re: "Maximum active number of stations" error
Hi Hristo,
Thanks for taking the time to explain the advantages of OW Cloud, and there's no question this is a huge step forward for all of us. Thanks for all your work on OW and OW Cloud and I will look into setting up a tag in the near future.
One question about the current setup. Am I permanently blocked from publishing additional events after hitting the "maximum active number of stations" error, or after several days of not publishing anything, will I automatically be allowed to publish again? I do appreciate the 'Add event for follow up' option and I am currently using that now to help me schedule my observing strategy for each clear night.
Thanks again,
Dave
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Re: "Maximum active number of stations" error
Hi David,
One of the issues that?OW Cloud () is trying to address is to make it easier for people find and share interesting events to observe with others.
While it is still far from getting there, it currently computes all events in the next two months involving all numbered asteroids and stars down to mag 16 and it makes those events discoverable by people who want to review them and further make them special by additionally tagging them with a certain tag.
Currently all OW feeds are implemented using this mechanisms i.e. the feed maintainers tag the events from their feed with the tag of the feed.
From what I understand you were computing personal predictions and then announcing stations for them, so you can make those events visible to other people. This is pretty much the same as maintaining a feed. One day all users will be able to search all OWC transient events directly and find what they want to observe, but currently events will need to be tagged in order for them to become visible in OW.
If you are interested Dave, you could set up your own tag and tag events in OWC. This would make those events visible to OW users and you will not have to announce a station to observe them as everyone interested will be able to see them.
A new tag could really be anything, for example 'good' events visible from a particular area, where you define what good means. Then you need to advertise your tag and see if observers will be interested to subscribe for your tag and observe your tagged events. The tag could be also something a bit more special - for example not just any event with a non-zero probability but actually events involving asteroids that present a particular scientific interest. You could use the new Community Tag mechanism to advertise such events.
In short trying to make your personal feed visible in OW by announcing stations for your events is not a great way to set up a feed. Also if not many of those events end up being observed by others could also mean that your selection criteria (non zero probability) may be doesn't make a very interesting feed / tag. If you have time to find events and point observers to them, you should try to find something else that makes the events interesting and I can then help you with OWC tagging to make those events visible in OW without you having to announce a station for them just to get them appear in OW.
If we don't try to find a special reason to observe an event and everyone starts producing personal feed with all non-zero probability events, then either there will be 20 million events in OW for everyone to additionally filter on, or everyone will be observing their own events for a single chord. Both options are not very exciting or useful. So we really need to start finding events that stand out from the rest if we want multiple chords and obtaining results that help us advance occultation science.
I hope this makes sense.
Hristo.
On Sunday, May 30, 2021, 2:47:32 PM GMT+10, David Oesper via groups.io <oesper@...> wrote:
[Edited Message Follows]
Thanks, Hristo, I will see what I can do. I am also trying to minimize the amount of time I spend each day calculating predictions, so would rather err on the side of caution and not miss any potentially good events.
I do have a high commitment to observe any event that someone else signs up for, but if I don't publish them, how will others know what I am prepared to observe?
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Re: "Maximum active number of stations" error
Thanks, Hristo, I will see what I can do. I am also trying to minimize the amount of time I spend each day calculating predictions, so would rather err on the side of caution and not miss any potentially good events.
I do have a high commitment to observe any event that someone else signs up for, but if I don't publish them, how will others know what I am prepared to observe?
Dave
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Re: "Maximum active number of stations" error
Hi Dave,
The idea of announcing a station is to show others a commitment to observe and if you cannot observe all the events you have signed up for, then I would suggest that you apply additional filtering and you sign up for less events so you don't exceed the limit of 300 stations for 60 days.
OW has an option to 'Add event for follow up' which will still add the event to your 'My events' but no station will be announced and others will not know that you may review this event later and decide to observe. You can always sign up for the event a day or so before the actual event if you seem determined to observe it.
I also see that you always announce a High commitment to observe but you said that you end up skipping, so the value of High commitment that you are using does not seem to indicate your actual commitment.
Happy to hear the views of other observers on the subject but I am thinking that you should not be submitting stations for so many events if you often don't end up observing them and therefore will likely not need to be able to submit more than 300 stations per 60 days.
Hristo.
On Sunday, May 30, 2021, 1:50:18 PM GMT+10, David Oesper via groups.io <oesper@...> wrote:
Hi Hristo,
Since David Herald allowed Occult to filter predictions by probability percent (a request from myself and others), I am adding all events with a probability > 1% where my observatory is in the predicted shadow in addition to all events where my MPCOrb or JPL Horizons probability is 10% or greater. Add to that a few long duration and bright star events with probability > 1%, and the number of potential events per night can sometimes exceed more than 5 per night. I find it helpful when planning each night's observing session to have several events to choose from, as sometimes there are two or more events during the same hour, for example, which makes an efficient use of my observing time. Of course, I always try to observe the events with more than one observer signed up, but many of the ones I publish where I am the only observer, I end up skipping and report as a "no observation". It hasn't helped my observation percentage that most of the past two months have been cloudy here, but at least I am always prepared when it is clear.
Thanks much,
Dave
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OW 5.0.2 Update - Observation Campaigns & Community Tags feeds
Hi All,
I have released an update of OW today.
It contains two new feeds called "Observation Campaigns" and "Community Tags".
The "Observation Campaigns" feed, as the name suggests, will contain events from special campaigns. At the moment the only campaign is the 'Slow Rotators' but I expect new campaigns to be added in the future and possibly I could migrate the feeds under the Lucky Star umbrella to also be part of this feed.
The "Community Tags" feed contains events that could be tagged by any one on OWC using one of the existing community tags. At the moment the only tag is 'Suspected Moons' for asteroids, as the name suggests, with suspected moons that need confirmation. If anyone wants to tag events with different community tags - these can be added.
The main difference between the two feeds is that "Observation Campaigns" will have a web-page with information about the campaign and the campaign will be more organized i.e. observations will need to be reported not only to the IOTA regional coordinators, but also to the people running the campaign, and those observations would typically be used in one or multiple papers, that will be the result of the campaign.
The Community Tags feed on the other hand include events of a particular scientific interest identified by out community, but there is no campaign associated with them. This is more of an experimental feed that I hope will help more people to get involved in identifying and tagging interesting events, for a particular reason, and also helping potential observers having to choose between a large number of potential targets, to know exactly how their observation of those events will be useful, outside of the standard astrometry and shape and size determination that is the main result of all other observations not included in a campaign feed.
After OW is updated, if you don't run OW as an administrator account, then make sure that you manually restart it after the update. In this release I still have not address the problem that when running OW as a non-admin account, after the update OW will be restarted with the admin account, and because OWs event database is stored per user, the events after the restart will be different. This is manually fixed by stopping OW and starting it again with your current user account. I hope to address this issue in a next OW update.
Regards, Hristo Pavlov.
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Re: "Maximum active number of stations" error
Hi Hristo,
Since David Herald allowed Occult to filter predictions by probability percent (a request from myself and others), I am adding all events with a probability > 1% where my observatory is in the predicted shadow in addition to all events where my MPCOrb or JPL Horizons probability is 10% or greater. Add to that a few long duration and bright star events with probability > 1%, and the number of potential events per night can sometimes exceed more than 5 per night. I find it helpful when planning each night's observing session to have several events to choose from, as sometimes there are two or more events during the same hour, for example, which makes an efficient use of my observing time. Of course, I always try to observe the events with more than one observer signed up, but many of the ones I publish where I am the only observer, I end up skipping and report as a "no observation". It hasn't helped my observation percentage that most of the past two months have been cloudy here, but at least I am always prepared when it is clear.
Thanks much,
Dave
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Re: "Maximum active number of stations" error
Hi David,
You have 300 announced stations for the 2 months from 1 Apr to 1 Jun. This is an average of 5 per night and looks like you have reported observations for almost all the ones that have passed.
This is pretty impressive! Do you have some sort of an automated unattended system or do you 'attend' those observations?
OW has a limit of allowing 300 submitted stations for a 2 month period as a precaution of denial of services attacks by malicious users. I thought that 5 events per night will be more than enough for most users.
I can increase your personal limit of stations but would be really curious to find out how do you manage to observe so many events?
Hristo.
On Sunday, May 30, 2021, 11:40:01 AM GMT+10, David Oesper via groups.io <oesper@...> wrote:
I've hit a problem with OccultWatcher tonight that I've never seen before:
The maximum active number of stations for your account has been reached. You cannot announce more stations.
First of all, I only have a single station for each event, as I am operating from a fixed observatory.
Second, there are two events for tomorrow evening that I cannot sign up for because of this.
Please advise.
Thanks,
David Oesper
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"Maximum active number of stations" error
I've hit a problem with OccultWatcher tonight that I've never seen before:
The maximum active number of stations for your account has been reached. You cannot announce more stations.
First of all, I only have a single station for each event, as I am operating from a fixed observatory.
Second, there are two events for tomorrow evening that I cannot sign up for because of this.
Please advise.
Thanks,
David Oesper
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Re: Night Eagle Astro Edition power connection
Jerry, ? The camera was initially designed for use in drones and remote control airplanes.? The cabling was designed around standards used in that FPV industry.? We adapted the camera to occultation use, as it had a big chip, as big as the WAT910HX/RC/BD, and it was a sensitive as both the WAT910’s and the QHY174GPS.? Best of all, it was inexpensive and they modified the programming to allow three levels of integration, 2x, 4x, and 8x.? So, I hope you can cope with the inconveniences so you can reap the benefits.? Since we started using the RunCam for occultations, I have analyzed numerous videos recorded by users around the world and the RunCam videos have been consistently good with very low noise. ? One item of note, the camera uses a rolling shutter system, so each scan line on the video is recorded at different times.? Occultation timings have to be corrected using special correction factors based on the ‘Y’ position of the star on the chip [‘Y’ position determines when the scan was performed on the star relative to the start of frame time].? We use an Excel spreadsheet in North America to make the necessary corrections.? You may want to check with Eric Frappa to see how they prefer to make the corrections for European reports. ? Good luck – Murphy will soon change his attention to some other poor soul with a new camera or telescope and soon you will have clear skies in abundance! ? Tony George Scottsdale, AZ ?
toggle quoted message
Show quoted text
From: [email protected] <[email protected]> On Behalf Of jerryrst
Sent: Thursday, May 27, 2021 7:41 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [OccultWatcher] Night Eagle Astro Edition power connection? Hello Tony,
??? Just got the camera working again with the powerpack. The next night will be 100% cloud and rain - Murphy was right.
The connections to the camera are very inconvenient
Best wishes, Jerry (Liederbach, near Frankfurt, Germany)
Am 27.05.2021 um 16:08 schrieb TriAstro: Thank you for that information Jerry.? I hope the camera works out for you and you get many successful occultation observations.? ? ? Tony George Scottsdale, AZ
?
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Re: Night Eagle Astro Edition power connection
Hello Tony,
??? Just got the camera working again with the powerpack. The next
night will be 100% cloud and rain - Murphy was right.
The connections to the camera are very inconvenient
Best wishes, Jerry (Liederbach, near Frankfurt, Germany)
Am 27.05.2021 um 16:08 schrieb TriAstro:
toggle quoted message
Show quoted text
Thank you for that information Jerry.? I hope the camera works
out for you and you get many successful occultation
observations.? ?
?
Tony George
Scottsdale, AZ
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Tim Haymes
David Oesper
