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Scheduling the Sun

As the Sun is regularly observed by I-LOFAR a script was made by Jessica Murphy to indicate the best times for observations.

This script calculates the periods during which the sun is above a specified horizon angle for a given location and date. It also retrieves solar flare probabilities from an external shell script and optionally plots the Sun's elevation over time.

The script prints the periods during which the sun is above the specified horizon angle, along with the solar flare probabilities retrieved from the sun_flare_prob shell script. If the -plot flag is used, a plot of the sun's elevation over time is displayed. The following output will be printed for a given set of parameters. 

2024-06-21T04:00 - 2024-06-21T20:00 : [Sun357] # Flare probs: 25% MCSTAT 15% NOAA

Running this code on the LGC 

To get the ideal times to observe the Sun on a given day, simply run into the LGC and run the command sun

If you want to change the date of the calculation, the elevation or plot out the results. The following can be done. 

cd ~/scheduling/schedules/tmp/Solar-Schedule/; python3 sun.py -horizon 45.0 -plot -date 2024-06-21