The Planck On-Fligh Forecaster (POFF) is a tool to predict when a position
in the sky will be within a selected angular distance from any receiver direction
POFF download temporarily not available!!!!
Acknowledgements
Useful links
of the Planck satellite according to its pre-programmed observational strategy.
This tool has been developed in the framework of the Planck LFI Core Team activities,
but it is now used by the whole collaboration.
POFF is a combination of IDL routines which combine the publicly available information
about the Planck scanning strategy and focal plane shape in order to identify
if a given (list of) position(s) can be observable by the satellite at a given frequency and/or by selected
receivers in a given time range.
The output can be displayed with the desired time resolution and selecting among various sorting options.
The code is not a Planck product, but it has been validated within the Planck LFI pipeline,
looking for sources in the first satellite datasets.
It will be implemented among the general tools of the LFI Data Processing Center.
The code format and the large number of options make it flexible and suitable for many applications.
POFF is currently successfully used to plan activities, including observations with several ground-based facilities.
For requests please contact the Author: massardi@ira.inaf.it
The POFF code is available for downloading for free.
We gratefully appreciate any acknowledgement to our code if you found it useful for your projects.
You can acknowledge the use of this code with the sentence
"This research has made use of the Planck On-Flight Forecaster code by
M. Massardi and C. Burigana (Massardi and Burigana, 2009)."
The POFF user manual
An html user guide to quickly go through all the POFF options.
"The Planck On-Flight Forecaster" paper by M. Massardi and C. Burigana
The comprehensive description of POFF, its scientific rationale, and its possible applications
including a complete user manual and a set of examples. Submitted for publication, available on astro-ph.
The ESA Planck pointing webpage
On this page it is possible to download the most updated versions of the Planck PPL and the SIAM files,
necessary to use POFF.