skychart

A skychart for Matlab: display the sky view

SKYCHART: a class to plot a sky chart with stars/objects
This class computes and plots the sky seen at given location and time. About
43000 stars and 13000 deep sky objects are considered, as well as the Sun, the
Moon and 7 planets. The actual number of rendered objects depends on the zoom
level in the sky chart.

You may zoom the plot using the Zoom tool (in the Toolbar). You may as well
use the drag tool to move the visible area. Right-click shows a contextual
menu with the under-lying object properties (coordinates, type, ...).

To use this code, type

>> sc = skychart

displays the view at the current UTC and location.

Methods:
skychart: create the view
date: set/get the date (UTC)
getplace: get the current GPS location from the network
plot: plot/replot the view.
connect: connect to a scope controler
goto: send connected scope to selected location
findobj: search for a named object and select it

You may force a re-computation and replot of the sky view with:

>> compute(sc, 'force')
>> plot(sc, 1)

Connecting to a Scope

You may connect to a telescope mount using e.g.

>> connect(sc, scope)

where 'scope' should be an object with methods:

getstatus: read the mount status, and update the scope properties:
scope.ra.h, scope.ra.min, scope.dec.deg, scope.dec.min
gotoradec(RA,DEC): send the mount to location (RA,DEC)

when scope is omitted, a connection with a Vixen StarBook is attempted. This
controler can be set in 'simulate' mode.

Credits:
E. Ofek MAAT GPL3 2004
http://weizmann.ac.il/home/eofek/matlab/
F. Glineur parse_json BSD 2009
https://fr.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/23393--another--json-parser
P. Tenenbaum Local Time to UTC, BSD 2008
https://fr.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/22295-local-time-to-utc
Stars (~46000) data base from http://astrosci.scimuze.com/stellar_data.htm
Deep sky objects (~13000) from http://klima-luft.de/steinicke/ngcic/ngcic_e.htm
StarBook (Vixen) https://fr.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/65944-vixen-starbook-control