Setup S2KB

Setup S2KB started as simple command line utility written in IDL to help determine a pointing center for observation. It was originally intended to help deal with the problem of which way and how much to offset the telescope to find a suitable guide star. However, it has evolved into a much more flexible tool that can be used both before observations begin to plan a field and during observations to help identify guide stars.

Setup S2KB is freely avaliable and can be downloaded as an IDL SAV file for use with the IDL Virtual Machine. I have tested the software with IDL versions 6.1 and 7.0.
  IDL SAV file: here
  Source Code: The source code is avaliable upon request.

To run Setup S2KB, type the following at a command line:
If you have an IDL license:

Full documentation of Setup S2KB can be found in PDF version here.

Changes in the 04Sep08 Version
+  Fixed a bug dealing with VizieR GSC catalog results that contained lower-cased formating codes.
+  Improved support for Windows systems, but printing is still missing.
+  Improved support for screen sizes down to 1024x768.

Changes in the 20Jun08 Version
+  Fixed a bug in dealing with offsets that move the pointing center across an RA of 0^h. Without this fix, offseting west across this RA leads to offsets that are over 180^o.

Changes in the 15Jun08 Version
+  Added options to load, search, and plot objects in a telescope cache file.
+  Changed how the DSS images are retrieved. GIF files are now used instead of FITS to keep down the file size and reduce network traffic.
+  Renames "Display Filters" to "Object Types" to make the point of the menu more clear.
+  Add automatic fall backs for DSS images and change the server used for GSC searches. These searches are now sent to the CADC.