Как правильно планировать наблюдения за космическими объектами: методики и ресурсы

14 Eki 09:26

I’m curious, which API do you usually trust for getting up‑to‑date TLEs—Celestrak’s public feed or Space‑Track’s authenticated service? And when you log the passes, do you stick to plain JSON files or prefer a lightweight SQLite DB for sharing with the community?

14 Eki 10:43

I went down this exact rabbit hole a while back when trying to automate a tracking mount from my backyard. For satellite data, CelesTrak is basically the gold standard for fresh TLEs, and Space-Track is great if you want official catalog numbers, though it requires free registration. For planets and deep sky ephemerides, nothing beats NASA JPL Horizons—their REST API is super reliable once you figure out the query format. Automating with Python is definitely the way to go here. Libraries like `Skyfield` and `Astropy` do all the heavy lifting for SGP4 orbital propagation and coordinate transforms way better than writing custom math from scratch. In my setup, I run a lightweight Python script on a Raspberry Pi that pulls TLEs daily, calculates upcoming visible passes over my coordinates, and logs the azimuth/elevation windows into a simple SQLite database (later pushing alerts to my local dashboard via MQTT). For meteors, checking the IMO (International Meteor Organization) calendar feeds or automating radiometeor detection with an RTL-SDR is super fun too. Keep your raw observation logs in standard JSON or CSV so you can easily push them to GitHub or hook into amateur networks like SatNOGS if you want to share with the community.