Table of Contents

UTEP Cassini Software Downloads

CASVU Data Analysis Tool
- CASVU Downloads
- Notes
- Modifications

Saturn Viewer
- Downloads
- Installation
- Running the viewer
- Notes on running the viewer:
- Modifications for Saturn Viewer 7.2 (2/28/2001):
- Modifications for Saturn Viewer 7.2.2 (3/30/2001):
- Modifications for Saturn Viewer 7.3.0 (9/7/2001):

Footprint Viewer
- Downloads
- Footprint Installation
- Running the Footprint viewer
- Notes
- Footprint Modifications

UTEP Cassini Software Downloads     top of page

This page was modified on 05/23/05. This work was supported in part by NASA Grant CC2-5337.

The Software Engineering Research Group at the Univeristy of Texas at El Paso has created several software tools for the Rings Working Group in mission planning and data analysis for the Cassini mission to Saturn. Cassini lifted off from Earth in 1997. It begins its 6-to-8 year orbit of Saturn in 2004. This page contains the following sections:

If you download any of the software here, please send me an email at sroach @ cs.utep.edu so I can let you know when new releases are issued.

CASVU Data Analysis Tool     top of page

If you have questions or problems with the CASVU tool, send email to casvu @ cs.utep.edu. (Sorry for not making this clickable. We are trying to avoid email scrapers.)

CASVU Downloads     top of page

Uses the Interactive Data Language (IDL) by Research Systems Inc (www.rsinc.com/idl/index.asp . IDL 6.0 runs in a virtual machine, and the virtual machine has been ported to a number of environments. Intially, CASVU is supported only under Solaris. However, it may be possible to port the software to Linux, SGI, MAC OSX, or Windows.

The User Manual contains instructions for installing and running the CASVU program. To run the CASVU software, you must either have an IDL license or the IDL virtual machine. The virtual machine can be obtained free of charge at http://www.rsinc.com/idlvm/index.asp . Follow the directions found there to install the IDL virtual machine.

Notes     top of page

Modifications     top of page

Saturn Viewer     top of page

The Saturn Viewer is intended to assist the Rings Working Group in mission planning for the Cassini mission to Saturn. The viewer displays field of view indicators for a variety of instruments as well as a wireframe of the view of Saturn and its rings from Cassini.

Downloads     top of page

The viewer uses the Motif libraries and runs under Unix X-windows only. If you have already downloaded the full tar file and are only looking for the 7-3-0 updates, you need only download the "viewer only" version. The following Unix platforms are supported:

CUK

Edison library

Animation library

Installation     top of page

The tars are about 15 to 23 MB, as large as 30MB uncompressed. To uncompress run the following commands from the shell:

mkdir viewer

mv |file name| viewer

cd viewer

gunzip < !file name! | tar xf -

!file name! is the xxx.tar.gz file.

Running the viewer     top of page

The viewer is saturn7. To run the viewer, type

saturn7 satker.txt kernels.list

If you get a nasty X error message like

ld.so.1: saturn5: fatal: libXt.so.5.0: open failed: No such file or directory Killed

then you need to set your environment (see next paragraph).

The viewer requires Motif and X11R5 or X11R6. These libraries will be linked at execution time. The loader will find them if you set the environment variable LD_LIBRARY_PATH to the path containing the libraries. Setting this variable depends on your shell. Under tcsh, the command is

setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH /usr/local/lib

Under some other shells (bash, for example) it's probably something like

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib

/usr/local/lib is the path on my machine. It may be different on yours. To find the libraries, try

find /usr -name "libXm*" -print

Be careful to watch the double quotes around libXm* This assumes the library will be found in /usr. It might not be there, but in /opt or some other place. If you have something like libXm.so.1, the viewer may work. If not, you'll need to install Motif (and maybe X ... Motif is free and easy to install, X is free, but more difficult).

Under Solaris, the loader sometimes gets confused about minor version numbers. You may get an error like

ld.so.1 saturn7 fatal: libXt.so.5.0 open failed

but you have a library libXt.so.5 in the path specified in the LD_LIBRARY_PATH variable. A workaround is to copy the libXt.so.5 to a new file named libXt.so.5.0.

One way to do this is to link symbolically:

ln -s /usr/openwin/lib/libXext.so libXext.so.5.0

If you do this in the current directory, be sure to add the current directory to the LD_LIBRARY_PATH by doing something like

setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH ./:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH

You will need to have some version of the following in order to succeed.

libXt.so

libX11.so

libXext.so

Two versions of the saturn viewer are included for solaris.

Notes on running the viewer:     top of page

The viewer now depends on two configuration files. These must be specified on the command line when you start the program. The first file is a kernel file that specifies rings and field of view options. The sample "satker.txt" contains documentation on setting up the file.

The second file contains a list of kernel data files for the planets and spacecraft. An example has been provided in "kernels.list". To change the loaded kernel files, simply edit this file and replace the kernel files listed with new ones. The "#" character is a comment marker. All text on a line following this mark is ignored.

NOTE: The viewer will not run unless data is found for all the specified ephemeris objects. These are the objects with NAIF IDs 10 (sun), -90 (cassini), 699 (saturn), 606 (titan), and 399 (earth).

Modifications for Saturn Viewer 7.2 (2/28/2001):     top of page

  1. The subspacecraft latitude is given in geodetic coordinates rather than geocentric as before.
  2. Spacecraft altitude has been replaced by distance to the ring plane.
  3. The first field of view indicator (FOV) in the configuration file (the one whose text appears at the bottom of the Ansae phase angle list) is movable. To set the FOV somewhere other than at the ansae, _right_ click (not left click) the mouse with the cursor either on rings or on the planet surface. The FOV indicators will disappear from the ansae, and an FOV indicator will appear at the cursor. The phase angle, elevation angle, and the distance from Cassini to the point on the rings or planet surface will be displayed in text. (The elevation angle is the Cassini-point-ring-plane angle, and is always positive).

    4. During animation, the FOV indicator remains at a fixed latitude and a fixed angular offset from Cassini. (The longitude separation between the fov point and the subspacecraft point is fixed).

    To move the FOV to a new location, move the mouse cursor and right- click. To restore the FOV to the original configuration (at ither ansa), move the mouse cursor off the planet and rings and right click.

    Known problems: If you move the center of the scene (by a left click or by using the pan buttons on the bottom of the viewer), the FOV motion does not work correctly. There is an option to "reset camera" under the edit menu. If you accidently move the center of the scene, you can restore the original scene by using this option.

  4. When you use the "edit/set time" feature, the set time window will remain open and on the screen after pressing OK or the Enter key.
  5. If the ephemeris file being loaded does not contain data for Cassini as -90, the program will search for Cassini data using NAIF ID -82.

Modifications for Saturn Viewer 7.2.2 (3/30/2001):     top of page

  1. When the FOV is moved using the right mouse button, two or three items of data will appear. In all cases, phase angle and the distance from cassini to the FOV point are displayed. If the FOV is on the rings (as opposed to the Saturn surface), the angle between the FOV-Cassini ray and the ring plane is given (angle-ring-cas). The sign of this angle is the same as the sign of the sub-spacecraft latitude.
  2. In previous releases, if the window was resized and not made square, the FOV did not correspond to the current cursor location. Also, if the window was resized the display was clipped to a square display, leaving part of the display blank. Under this version, if the window is resized and is not square, the display fills the available window and right mouse clicks are tracked accurately. It is possible to size the window so that some things do not appear (such as the text in the lower left of the screen).

Modifications for Saturn Viewer 7.3.0 (9/7/2001):     top of page

  1. The angle-ring-cas computation added on 3/29/2001 was incorrect. This version fixes that error. The current version computes this angle by taking the angle between two vectors: the ring-plane point-cassini vector and the ring- plane point-projection of cassini on ring plane vector. The ring-plane point is the point on the rings specified by moving the FOV. The previous computation used the Saturn-cassini projection, not the FOV-cassini projection.
  2. An option to add a title to a display has been added. To set a title, choose Options, Set Title. Text entered here displays at the top left-hand side of the viewer. This text appears in printouts, also.

Footprint Viewer     top of page

Downloads     top of page

The viewer uses the Motif libraries and runs under Unix X-windows only. The following Unix platforms are supported:

Footprint Installation     top of page

To uncompress run the following commands from the shell:

mkdir footprint

mv !file name! footprint

cd footprint

gunzip < !file name! | tar xf -

!file name! is the xxx.tar.gz file.

Running the Footprint viewer     top of page

The viewer is footprint. To run the viewer, type

footprint !config-file!

If you get a nasty X error message like

ld.so.1: saturn5: fatal: libXt.so.5.0: open failed: No such file or directory Killed

then you need to set your environment (see Running Saturn Viewer ).

The viewer requires Motif and X11R5 or X11R6. These libraries will be linked at execution time. The loader will find them if you set the environment variable LD_LIBRARY_PATH to the path containing the libraries. Setting this variable depends on your shell. Under tcsh, the command is

setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH /usr/local/lib

Under some other shells (bash, for example) it's probably something like

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib

Notes     top of page

Configuration file     top of page

notes on times, events, triggers, etc

Footprint Modifications     top of page

This work was supported in part by NASA Grant CC2-5337.