Week 1

This is the beginning of our year 2 group project , we had several meetings with our tutor and we decided on a moon tracker project. After placing our order before Christmas we still only received the Arduino UNO in this weeks lab.
We researched the Arduino as a team to gain a better understanding of the physical module and its coding language.

• Received components:

- Arduino UNO
- Raspberry pi camera

• Project plan: 

	Week 1	Week 2	Week 3	Week 4	Week 5	Week 6
Components
Design
Testing
Report
Poster
Blog

Moon Tracker software specification

Problem specification Team A: 

Write a program to control a pan and tilt bracket, allowing the following of the moon by a camera, mounted on top of said bracket.

Team B will then use the camera to take multiple pictures, which will be overlaid via image processing to produce a detailed final image.

Analysis

Inputs:

·         Time of day when bracket is placed in position for tracking

·         The date on which tracking is taking place

·         The longitude and latitude points of bracket position

Outputs:

·         Pan and tilt movement of the micro server controlled bracket

Relevant information for understanding of algorithm and astronomical terms:

Universal Time - Also known as astronomical time or solar time, refers to the earth rotation. It is used to compare the pace provided by international atomic time with the actual length of an Earth day [1].

Julian Day number - is the integer number of days that have elapsed since the initial epoch, which is defined as noon universal time, Monday, January 1, 4713 BC in the Julian calendar [2].

Used to find celestial coordinate:

Right Ascension – the representation of an observer points longitude on earth in space [3].

Declination – the representation of an observer points latitude on earth in space [3].

Used to find horizon coordinate:

Azimuth Angle – The azimuth (az) angle is the compass bearing, relative to true (geographic) north, of a point on the horizon directly beneath an observed object [4]. 

Altitude/Elevation - The elevation (el) angle, also called the altitude, of an observed object is determined by first finding the compass bearing on the horizon relative to true north, and then measuring the angle between that point and the object, from the reference frame of the observer [4].

Ecliptic longitude and latitude – co-ordinates of the apparent path of the moon on the celestial sphere.

Sidereal time - Sidereal time measures the rotation of our planet relative to the stars.  It allows astronomers to keep time without worrying about the motion of Earth around the sun [5]. Moon moves around the earth in roughly 27.3 days, also known as 1 sidereal month, with its average movement about 13.2 degrees per day [6].

Further considerations - Must take into consideration the speed of the earth(30 Km per second), the speed that the moon is moving relative to the earth(3683 Km per hour), also camera requires 10 seconds minimum between photographs.

[1] U. -. T. w. t. Standard, "timeanddate," [Online]. Available: https://www.timeanddate.com/time/aboututc.html. 
[2] J. D. N. Fandom, "Fandom," [Online]. Available: http://calendars.wikia.com/wiki/Julian_day_number. 
[3] A. MacRobert, "Sky and telescope," 20 July 2006. [Online]. Available: http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-resources/what-are-celestial-coordinates/. 
[4] T. Target, "Azimuth and Elevation," [Online]. Available: http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/azimuth-and-elevation. 
[5] C. Crockett, "What is Sidereal time?," 10 June 2012. [Online]. Available: http://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/what-is-sidereal-time.
[6] M. Motion, "http://cseligman.com/text/sky/moonmotion.htm," [Online]. 

Group Members:

 Amy Bannon, Abdulrahman Alanazi, Dominyka Rubeziute, 

Junkun Di and Yoka Zhang.  

Supervisor: 

Dr. John Marsland