README.md

katexternaldata

Karoo Array Telescope (KAT) system package with data from sources external to SARAO that is updated automatically on a daily basis by the HEAD Node on site (e.g., TLEs and Earth orientation parameters).

Usage

The catalogues directory contains catalogues of sources. A subset of these are available at run-time in MeerKAT's control and monitoring system as a katpoint.Catalogue object. Typically called kat.sources in observation scripts. In the katpoint.Catalogue object, the satellite TLE targets can be filtered by tags. The currently available tags are: BEIDOU, GALILEO, GEO, GPS, GLONASS, INTELSAT, Iridium, Iridium-NEXT, SCIENCE, ZoA. The tag names are maintained in a different repository, so check this file for the latest details.

Not all sources are loaded automatically into the kat.sources objects. For satellite TLEs, the catalogues directory contains both the source files (<type>.txt) and corresponding filter files (<type>_keep.txt). Only the satellites listed in the _keep.txt files are available in the kat.sources catalogue. However, the full files could be loaded manually.

URLs used for downloads

NOTE: The URLs for downloads are maintained in a different repository, so check this file for the latest details. As a convenience, the URLs (possibly outdated) are repeated here:

Earth orientation parameters

• IERS daily EOP: ftp://ftp.iers.org/products/eop/rapid/daily/finals.daily
• IERS daily EOP (2000A calculation method): ftp://ftp.iers.org/products/eop/rapid/daily/finals2000A.daily
• IERS leap second data: https://hpiers.obspm.fr/iers/bul/bulc/Leap_Second.dat

Medium to high orbit satellites (TLEs)

• beidou.txt
• galileo.txt
• geo.txt
• gps.txt
• glonass.txt
• intelsat.txt
• iridium.txt
• iridium-NEXT.txt
• science.txt
• stations.txt
• visual.txt

Solar system objects and deep space satellites

• Soft03Cmt.edb
• Soft03CritList.ebd
• Soft03Distant.edb
• Soft03Unusual.edb