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GOLDEN,
CO—Astronomer and software developer Steve Bisque, co-founder of
Software Bisque, has been invited to speak at the Air Force Maui Optical
Station (AMOS) Technical Conference in Maui, Hawaii. The speech will focus
on how products from Software Bisque are being integrated into the Air
Force’s observation and tracking of satellites. The AMOS conference will
be held August 30 through September 2, 1999. During his talk, entitled
"Leveraging Software to Make Highly Productive Robotic Telescope
Systems," Mr. Bisque will focus on the software applications
developed by his company.
The objectives of the AMOS Program are to
provide state-of-the-art measurement support to various government
agencies and the scientific community for research and development
programs; and to serve as a test-bed for newly developed evolving
electro-optical sensors. AMOS consists of the observatory’s premier
optical instrument, the 1.6-meter telescope, the sensors mounted on it,
and two smaller telescopes, the 0.82-meter and the 0.64-meter. These
telescopes track man-made satellites while recording their orbital
parameters (metrics), radiation properties (signatures), and forming
images for space-object identification.
Air Force Research Labs is using a
similar system developed by the Company, dubbed "Raven," as part
of a Ground-based Electro-Optical Deep Space Surveillance (GEODSS) network
that acquires data to help keep track of satellites for Air Force Space
Command (AFSPC) in Colorado Springs, Colorado. And whereas Raven is a
$100,000 system that provides productive punch to the Air force program,
it’s still a fraction of the cost of a standard GEODSS system thanks to
Software Bisque’s hardware-software combination. According to John
Africano of Boeing (an Air Force contractor), the Raven system has
"revolutionized the way they do astronomy" at the Maui Space
Surveillance System.
The Bisque software system—which
carries users from telescope and camera control through script-writing and
CCD imaging—is already familiar to many who practice survey astronomy,
which entails "patrolling" night skies for satellites,
supernovas, variable stars, near-earth asteroids, minor planets, and
comets.
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Golden-based Software Bisque is considered
by many in the field to be the leading astronomy software developer in the
industry. Its flagship software product, TheSky™, has gained a
well-earned reputation as the most sophisticated, elegant, yet easy-to-use
planetarium and telescope-control program (a program which also allows the
user to visualize the sky in depth and simulate celestial events).
Software Bisque has developed several extensions for TheSky, including
CCDSoft™ , a CCD imaging and image processing program; TPoint™ , a
program to analyze and optimize the pointing accuracy of many types of
computer-driven telescopes; and Orchestrate™ , a program that allows the
user to develop scripts that automatically integrate control of your
telescope, CCD camera, telescope dome and other devices. The company also
produces the Paramount GT-1100 robotic telescope mount, which allows
survey astronomers—professionals and "amateurs" alike—to
CCD-image (with operation via a scripting process and even remotely via
the internet) 200 or more deep-space objects in a single night. This
hardware-software combination provides off-the-shelf productivity never
before available.
Background on GEODSS
The responsibility for keeping track of
all man-made objects in orbit belongs to the Space Command Center located
within Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado Springs, Colo. The center receives
orbital data from GEODSS sites assigned to AFSPC. GEODSS sites play a
vital role in tracking these objects, particularly those in deep space.
Today there are almost 10,000 known objects in orbit around the earth,
ranging from active payloads, such as weather or communications
satellites, to "space junk" such as launch vehicle debris and
debris generated from satellite breakups. More than 2,500 of these
objects, including geostationary communications satellites, are in
deep-space orbits more than 3,000 miles from earth.
There are three operational GEODSS sites:
Socorro, N.M.; Maui, Hawaii; and Diego Garcia, British Indian Ocean
Territories. The Raven system brings together the telescope, CCD camera,
and personal computer. Its 0.40 m telescope has a 15-arc minute field of
view and is able to "see" objects 10,000 times dimmer than the
human eye can detect.
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The telescope
tracks the sky at the same rate as the stars.
This keeps the distant stars in the same
positions in the field of view. As the telescope
slowly moves, the Raven's CCD camera takes
electronic "snapshots" and records the
precise time. Star images remain fixed. Man-made
space objects, however, do not remain fixed, and
their movements show up as tiny streaks in the
image. Using the endpoints of these streaks and
the exact time the image was acquired, the
latest orbital elements of the objects, such as
satellites in orbits from 3,000 to 23,500 miles,
can be determined. This information is used to
update the list of orbiting objects and sent to
Cheyenne Mountain.
"Golden-based Software
Bisque is considered by many in the field to be
the leading astronomy software developer in the
industry. Its flagship software product, TheSky,
has gained a well-earned reputation as the most
sophisticated, elegant, yet easy-to-use
planetarium and telescope-control program.
Software Bisque has developed several software
extensions for TheSky, including CCDSoft,
Orchestrate, TPoint and AutomaDome."
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