Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Troubleshooting ETX auto tours

I finally got my first Autostar auto tour program to load. The main problem was that I didn't understand that just because I had an option to add a title or a description, that I HAD to add it. The instructions for the USER line are as follows:

USER ra dec "title string" "description string"
This command line allows you to access a specific object with your own description.
Enter USER, then the RA and DEC of a desired object and its title and description.
Use the format described in the Command Line section.


That means you must enter a title and a description, both of which need to be enclosed in quotation marks. Here is an example of what one line should look like:

AUTO SELECT USER 19:05:00 -07d08m00s "STF 2439" "Mags 8/9 Sep 22 PA 199 Spect B8"

Getting Autostar to accept the program was the first test. The real test, of course, will be to see if that tour will really take me to the stars that I want to visit. Tonight might be a good time to check it out if the weather holds. If not, it will be a while. I'm expecting it to get cloudy again, soon.

I originally thought I would just load one of the pre-existing auto tours that are available, but I'm really glad I decided to program my own. It isn't that hard, and I really like having my own particular list to work with.

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