8.5.2 File Format

The "program.txt" file is a plain text file containing a three or four column table. Empty lines are ignored, comments starting with a '#' as well. The numbers in the table are parsed as floating point numbers which only may consist of decimal digits, one decimal point ans an optional leading '-' if negative. The columns must be separated by an arbitrary number of space or tabulator characters. They have the following meanings:

• 1 --- time stampThe time stamp must be a Julian date with the time of day coded as a fraction of a day. Example: The Julian date for the common base of most computer clocks (1970-01-0100:00:00) is 2440587.5
• 2 --- azimuth angleThe azimuth angle in degrees
• 3 --- elevation angleThe elevation angle in degrees
• 4 --- polarization angleThe polarization angle in degrees. This column is optional, no polarization pointing is commanded if this column is missing.

Memory space is very limited in the ACU-ODM. The file size is limited to 64 Kbytes, being equivalent to about 12 days of AZ/EL data in 10 minutes intervals.