SpaceHound for Skymap Pro 6

SpaceHound, once configured, allows you to all that by the click of a button.

First time you run SpaceHound, you will be taken directly to the configuration screen. For each dataset (comet, asteroid and satellite) you specify the URL of the file to retrieve and the destination folder it will be saved to. If you are not interested in a particular dataset, just leave the URL and destination fields for that dataset blank.

Notes on URLs:
The URL must include the protocol name ie http: for webservers or ftp: for FTP servers. It must refer to an uncompressed text file in the correct Skymap 6 Pro format.
Remember that URLs are case sensitive on some servers.

Notes on destination folders:
Don't specify file names. Only names of existing folders are valid. To avoid typing errors, you might want to use the browse button. The retrieved files are named by concatenating the dataset name, the time of retrieval and a file extension. Comet and asteroid datasets are given the file extension '.cat', while satellite data are named '.tle' Example: comet-20000301-090931.cat. This naming convention makes it easy to see just when you updated your orbital data. It also makes it possible to store files from different datasets to the same folder. Please note, that the timestamp reflects the time of retrieval and does not tell when the data themselves were created. Older datasets are not removed automatically - you'll have to do that by hand.

Transferring data:
After finishing the the initial setup, you are ready to release the hound and fetch some data. Simply select which datasets to retrieve, then press the fetch button. If you did not setup URL and destination folder for a given dataset, the corresponding checkbox will be disabled. Note that depending on how you are connected to the Internet, you may have to manually establish a connection before pressing the fetch button.

Once the transfer starts, a progress bar shows you  approximately how far in the retrieval process you are.

You can abort the transfer by pressing the Stop button - however it may take some time before the transfer actually stops.

After the transfer a report form shows the results.

Normally the report either shows success or a brief description of what went wrong, but in some cases (see below) only the transfer is mentioned ie. 'Asteroid data update' but no status is given. This should be considered a failed transfer - the absence of the word 'Successful' means failure :-).

• SpaceHound will currently only download uncompressed textfiles.
• The datafiles should be in a format usable by Skymap Pro 6
• The dataprovider should not change the filename when updating data. If he does, you must update your configuration loosing some of the advantage by using SpaceHound
• I did not want to write code for handling the HTTP and FTP protocols myself, so I make use of the Internet Transfer Control by Microsoft. When handling FTP transfers, this control does all the work by itself - leaving me no clue as to the progress. As a result, when doing FTP transfers, you will see the progress bar move a small amount, then stop and stay put for the remainder of the transfer. There is nothing I can do about that.
• As mentioned above, when using FTP the the report form sometimes is blank. I saw this error frequently, when developing SpaceHound - always related to an error on my behalf. I don't see it anymore, but one of the testers has experienced it consistently. Until now, I have not been able to pinpoint what is wrong, so if you experience this error, please let me know.
• Latest on FTP problems: New FTP problems have surfaced during testing. The most serious of these cause SpaceHound to terminate. However everything still runs fine on my installation. This has led me to believe, that the culprit is the file wininet.dll. This file contains the actual implementation of the Internet Transfer Control. Msinet.ocx is just a wrapper. My version of wininet.dll is 5.00.2614.3500, if you have an older version, you should expect problems using FTP. To the best of my knowledge, wininet.dll is distributed with Internet Explorer. So if  you install IE5, you ought to get the latest wininet.dll too.

Comets:  http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/cfa/ps/Ephemerides/Comets/Soft01Cmt.txt
Asteroids: ftp://cfa-ftp.harvard.edu/pub/MPCORB/SkyMap.CAT
Satellites: http://oig1.gsfc.nasa.gov/files/visible.tle

Be warned that the asteroid database is 1.5MB uncompressed. Smaller selections of asteroids are available at the same site.

Please keep in mind, that the providers are doing us a favour by making these data available. Do not abuse their kindness by downloading data unnecessarily.

• SpaceHound should test the datafile for new data before actually downloading it.
• To accomodate special wishes SpaceHound should be scriptable. 

Before you download and use, please make sure to read the section 'Limitations' above. It contains important information.

• Download the Install kit (2MB), unzip it and run setup.exe
• The source code will be available later.

Send feedback to Henrik Persson

Updated 16th Mar. 2000