Overpass AB6A

For the longest time I ran SkyTrack on a Windows laptop to drive my strain-wave mounts. It worked, but it meant keeping a Windows machine alive for one job, and that machine was always the one that wanted an update on a clear night. Overpass is the native replacement for Mac, iPhone and iPad. It predicts satellite passes, tracks satellites, the Sun, the Moon, planets, stars, deep sky objects and comets, and drives an iOptron HAZ or HAE mount over WiFi or USB. You don't need a mount to use it. Without one, Overpass is a pass predictor, a sky and globe view, and a way to find out what that moving light was. PASSES SGP4 prediction from CelesTrak groups, your own URLs or TLE files, with the age of each source's elements shown. Filter by peak elevation, duration, visibility, distance from the Sun and whether the mount can keep up. A time bar moves the sky and the pass list up to two days either way. TRACKING - Passive: one goto, then the mount's own sidereal, lunar or solar rate. For stars, planets, the Moon, the Sun, deep sky objects and comets. - Step: a goto to where the satellite will be, repeated every couple of seconds. Fine for an antenna. - Smooth (Mac and USB): both axis rates varied about seven times a second against a planned track. On a HAZ46 it settles to a median error of about 2 arcseconds. The mount never turns through north, where the cable stop is. Overpass plans every slew and pass to match, and asks before it unwinds. SKY, GLOBE AND MAP The Observe screen switches between the sky overhead, a 3D globe and a flat world map, with up to five passes at once, their ground tracks and footprints, and day and night following the Sun. The globe and map are bundled with the app and work in a field with no signal. LOOK UP Hold up an iPhone or iPad and the sky is drawn over the camera picture. Tap a moving light to find out which satellite it is. A fine-tune panel calibrates the view on a star, and a night camera brings up faint stars. STATUS Range and range rate, speed, height, the Maidenhead square below the satellite, countdowns to rise, set and shadow entry, Doppler-corrected frequencies from the SatNOGS DB, and exposure times for your camera. CONJUNCTIONS Space station transits of the Moon and Sun near any place you choose, out to two weeks, drawn on a map with the band where the transit is visible. OBJECTS Messier, Caldwell, NGC and IC objects by the hand controller's numbers, every IAU-named star to magnitude 4, and comets from the Minor Planet Center. PRIVACY Overpass collects nothing about you. Your location stays on the device. Overpass is in English, Spanish, German, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian and Finnish. Overpass is independent and works with iOptron mounts. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by or supported by iOptron. iOptron is a trademark of iOptron Corporation.