Software

Software for Predicting the circumstances of occultations:

Occult (free)

Occult is our primary software program for predicting the circumstances of many types of astronomic occultations.  Occult will predict the circumstances of lunar occultations (total and grazing), asteroid occultations, occultations of planetary moons, and more.  Occult Resources page (for download link and other info).

OccultWatcher (free)

OccultWatcher is one of the primary tools for IOTA observers interested in asteroid occultations.  OccultWatcher filters the global list of asteroid occultation predictions to show the events passing near your site or region.  In addition observers can declare their planned location for observing an event.  This is our main tool for coordinating multiple observers for an event:  OccultWatcher help page.

GrazPrep (free)

GrazPrep will generate maps and local circumstances for lunar grazing occultations.  GrazPrep website

Software for Occultation Observations and Data Reduction:

IOTA_VideoCapture (free)

A simple program for capturing video with a windows PC (and an analog video capture device).  For Windows 10 and 11 users: To install IOTA_VideoCapture and the companion playback application, download the following zip file which contains the manual and install files: IOTA_VideoCapture (version 2.4).

For Windows 7 and 8 users: Version 2.3 is not tested for older OS’s. However, version 2.2 is still available for your use, although no longer supported. The zip file for that version is available at IOTA VideoCapture (version 2.2).

For more information on capturing occultation videos with a Windows PC, see this guide.

OccuRec (free)

A full featured program for capturing occultation video in Windows.  More information here.

Astro Flash Timer for iPhone (free)

AstroFlashTimer provides precise timestamp flashes based on NTP timing from the camera LED for astronomical videos (primarily asteroidal occultation recordings). Just point the camera flash into the optical path of the video recording device and trigger the desired flash mode.  The app will log the exact time of the video flash onto your iPhone.  The timing information can then be sent from the iPhone by email or text for later analysis.  It is available from the App Store.   More information here.

Occult Flash Tag for Android (free)

Occult Flash Tag provides precise timestamp flashes from the camera LED for astronomical videos (primarily asteroidal occultation recordings). Just point the camera flash into the optical path of the video recording device and trigger the desired flash mode.  The app will log the exact time of the video flash onto your Android device.  The timing information can then be sent from the Android phone by email or text for later analysis.  It is available on Google Play.   More information here.

PyMovie/PyOTE (free)

PyMovie is an aperture photometry program for analyzing video files.  PyOTE is a light curve analysis tool.  Both PyMovie and PyOTE are implemented in Python and have been tested on both MacOS, Linux, and Windows.  Instructions and documentation can be found on the PyMovie/PyOTE page

Limovie (free)

Limovie is a light measurement tool for analyzing video files containing occultation observations.  It runs on Windows (7, 8, 10) and is an essential tool for extracting light intensity curves from video recordings of stellar occultations.  More information on using LiMovie is posted at the Observations page.  The latest stable version (as of 2021-Apr-19) is version 0.9.9.5A-5g .

Tangra (free)

Tangra 3 is a free open source corss-platform software for reducing astronomical video observations such as asteroid occultations and runs natively on Windows, Linux and Mac OSX.  Tangra website.

ROTE (free)

ROTE is a complete light curve analysis tool programmed in R-code.  For more information, see the OTE Page.

VirtualDub2 (free)

General purpose video capture and editing tool.  VirtualDub2 website.

Additional Occultation related Software

More tools for analzying occultation observations may be found at this website.