Time to run my horrifying python code that builds a bash script that I use to repeatedly call some fortran code and make output I pull back into python for calculating telescope pointings.
My deepest apologies to everyone here who actually has training in making good software. I'm doing science!
(And no, I'm not looking for advice. Hilariously, this dumpster fire of code works well enough, and I don't need to improve it right now.)
@sundogplanets Just be glad the fortran code doesn't call some Forth routines which interrogate a clockwork device simulating Ha-dec pointing to do the conversion to az-el.
Yes, I observed on a radio telescope that did that. Went there once and found it went into slow slew mode for dec < 0 which meant it never went on source down in the South. "Fix that? You must be kidding. Just don't observe down there."
Most radio telescope in the early az-el period (say, 1965-70) had somewhere in the structure a simple equatorial mount with pickups and A-D converters to do provide the digital pointing data. The digital computers of the time just weren't fast enough on the trig functions. This viewed the equatorial mount as an analog computer with the clock drive as an integrator.
Prof. Sam Lawler
Marshall Eubanks