SkippyFoV : New animated Field of View Calculator

[andrew_d_cool (Andrew)]

Hello All,

I’ve often used Ron Wodaski’s 2001 vintage CCD Calculator to see how an object will appear in a camera stuck on a scope.

But after 15 years advancement in computing power, I figured it could do with a facelift.

Enter SkippyFoV, which uses sliders to adjust the various parameters that determine Field Of View, and provides a real time animated image using genuine photos to show how your scope/camera will view the object.

Download SkippyFoV from http://www.cool.id.au/SkippyFoV/

The animation of the graphics as you move the sliders is smooth on my desktop PC., and any modern computer shoudl handle it well. How it fares on someone’s 2004 vintage laptop running XP, I know not.

SkippyFoV is not installed into the Registry. Just unzip the file into a directory of your own making, e.g. C:\SkippyFoV, and run the SkippyFoV.exe file.

The image scale, width FoV and Height FoV sliders are “output” only, and it could well be argued that they should be removed, leaving just text fields for those values. (next version, perhaps...)


Constructive suggestions welcome.

Enjoy,

Andrew Cool
www.skippysky.com.au

[billdan (Bill)]

Hi Andrew,

Just tried to run it on my 10 year old Win XP mini-tower, and the application file failed with a "Runtime error 5, invalid procedure call or argument".

Looking at the log file a lot of files are meant to be copied to C:\Program Files,
example below, but this never happened, no directory was ever created.


Using IDL directory: C:\Program Files\Exelis\IDL85
Looking in manifest file F:\Andrew\Astronomy\SkippyFoV\manif est_rt.txt
Copying: C:\Program Files\Exelis\IDL85\bin/bin.x86_64/idl.dll
Copying: C:\Program Files\Exelis\IDL85\bin/bin.x86_64/idl.exe
Copying: C:\Program Files\Exelis\IDL85\bin/bin.x86_64/idlrt.exe

Or am I meant to download this program "Exelis" beforehand?

There is a sub-directory in the un-zipped download called IDL85, could I move this to C:\Program Files\Exelis
and would that work?


Regards
Bill

[mountainjoo (Jerome)]

Andrew, would it be possible to enable an option to enter values manually rather than using the sliders?

[cfranks (Charles)]

Originally Posted by mountainjoo

Andrew, would it be possible to enable an option to enter values manually rather than using the sliders?

I was able to enter them manually OK but I had to hit 'Enter' for each one.
It looks useful, Andrew, thanks. Can I suggest a slight improvement (for me at least). Another entry for FOV Rotation might help plan an imaging session?

Charles

[mountainjoo (Jerome)]

Originally Posted by cfranks

I was able to enter them manually OK but I had to hit 'Enter' for each one.

Thanks!

[Amaranthus (Barry)]

Awesome work Andrew! I've also downloaded SkippyStak to try out on my latest batch of acquisitions - will do it this weekend