About SODIS
End of July 2022 the founder and manager of euraster.net, Eric Frappa, informed the
European community of occultation observers about the end of his service by 2022 December 31.
So Eric Frappa took care for all observations made until end of 2022 and send the reductions
in the common way. IOTA/ES will take care of the data collection in a new portal named SODIS
in 2023 and further on.
IOTA/ES starts SODIS (Stellar Occultation Data Input System)
as a system to collect the observation results of the European
observers. In the web based system SODIS, observers can collect
and report all observations, also the negative results. During the
development of SODIS it had to be considered that data collection,
reviewing and reporting have the highest priority. Other functions,
like comparisation chords versus modelation of minor planets
will be possible, but have not yet been realised.
Unregistered users can see all observations collected in the
system of SODIS. You can reach this sub-domain via the
webpage of IOTA/ES. In this window the user can see all
observations in the database. On the upper part users
see some statistic and can search for different criteria (star, planet,
observer, country etc.). The search area is the top part of the start
screen, the database is visible after a scroll down.
The ever-increasing accuracy of astrometry of stars and
minor planets has expanded the possibilities for observing stellar
occultations in recent years. Whether distant TNOs, near-Earth
objects, comets, main-belt asteroids or future targets of space
probe missions, our observing tasks are diverse and will still
increase in number. Therefore, it is necessary to gradually
automate the collection of observational data in Europe and to
distribute the review of these data among several shoulders.
Observations of stellar occultations with only negative chords will
also be stored in the new database for possible future evaluations.
No observation should have been carried out in vain any more.
In order to lead this project successfully into the future, your
cooperation is needed. Report your observations on your own
into SODIS by creating an account. Please submit your data
completely to keep the workload of the reviewers on a low level.
The SODIS team is looking forward to your cooperation, criticism
and suggestions. Especially additional local reviewers for European
countries not yet covered are welcome.
If you can provide support and want to join the team, please contact us via sodis@iota-es.de.
You can find more information in our Journal for Occultation Astronomy (JOA) issue 2023-1.