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GPS enabled A-P goto mounts
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Paul Wilson <plw@...>
The government announced today that the purposeful degradation of the
GPS (Global Positioning System) signals available to civilian users will end tonight. With selective availability (SA) disabled, accuracy will improve by a noticeable amount. Just as significantly, the accuracy of the time signal will improve as well. Wouldn't it be neat if I could tie my GPS unit to the controller of the A-P mount? At the very least the mount would know right where it's positioned (latitude/longitude) and the exact date and time. It would also know very accurately the direction of true north. As today's press release mentions, there are many improvements to GPS in the works ranging from more satellites to new signals being broadcast. Unless you're a U.S. taxpayer ;-), it's free, and will probably stay that way. Imagine a portable equatorial mount that polar aligns itself! I expect that it will happen sooner than we think. Paul
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Louis A. Mamakos <louie@...>
Once SA is gone, accuracy will be improved perhaps by one order of
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magnitude to about 10m as compared to about 100m with SA enabled. Of course, if you're not moving, you can average your position and do somewhat better than that. Unless you are moving, GPS won't be of any help in figuring out your orientation. (Well, you can play some games if you have multiple antennas and do relative carrier-phase measurements to figure out your orientation with respect to a satellite, but this is somewhat specialized and expensive.) But even today with SA, knowing where you are within about 100m and what time it is within a couple of hundred nanoseconds ain't too shabby.. louie
The government announced today that the purposeful degradation of the
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