new additions to TASS home page

[Stupendous Man <richmond@p674p06.isc.rit.edu>]

  It's now possible to create a VERY simple star chart from information
in the TASS Database.  Remember, the current information is uncollated,
so you get multiple entries for the same star, and it may not be 
calibrated as well as possible ... but, if you still want to try,
visit 

        http://p674p06.isc.rit.edu/tass/test_dbms.html

and specify that you DO want a chart to be made.  Pick you
favorite graphics format (GIF, Postscript, or JPEG). 
Actually, you'll always get a GIF image stuck into the 
HTML page which results, but by clicking on the image, you can
get Postscript or JPEG.  Hmmm.  I should really not create the
GIF image by default, but ...  give me feedback and I'll
do my best to improve the facility.

  I urge people to try this out: make a V-band chart of 
(0.0 < RA < 0.5) and (0.0 < Dec < 0.5),
and look at chart: there's clearly an object which moves through the
field!   It turns out to take only a few minutes to move all the
way across a 3-degree swath, so I suspect that it's a satellite
of some kind.

  But making charts is a very simple, albeit tedious, way 
to find moving objects. 

  Other points of interest:

      - the TASS home page will be down tonight (Jan 2) and tomorrow 
        (Sat Jan 3), due to a power outage here at RIT.  Sorry.
 
      - but next week, I will install a UPS system on the machine,
        so that _unscheduled_ power failures don't destroy data

      - there's now a "TASS Guestbook".  Not very exciting, I know,
        but new visitors may want to give a brief blurb about themselves
        (and leave their E-mail and URL addresses)

      - (probably) we'll get a new, big disk for the TASS database
        in the next couple of weeks, just in time for Chris to 
        release his next set of TASS database software.
         
  Time to go watch some football :-)

                                    Michael Richmond