Scheduling Feasibility Checker (SFC)

    The CHEOPS Scheduling Feasibility Checker (SFC) tool allows you to check whether and when a target is visible to the instrument. You can also assess the impact that interruptions due to the satellite's passage through the South Atlantic Anomaly and Earth Occultations have on the visibility of the target. Finally, the SFC estimates the CHEOPS Observing Efficiency for the target, i.e. the fraction of time the instrument can collect photons from the target within the visibility window. The SFC is designed to run on your own computer in a virtual machine as a virtual image. The latest version is image 8 (released November 2022). You can find instructions on how to download, install, and use the virtual machine and tool by clicking on the following buttons:

     

    Notes:

    • Some users experienced difficulties using the SFC with UBUNTU OS. You can find suggested solutions here.
    • VirtualBox currently does not support the Apple M1 chipset. For now, there is no remedy to this problem other than using different hardware.
    • To view possible visits to the very end of the nominal mission, please change the "Validity_Stop" date in the HTML files used by the SFC to specify details of observation requests to UTC=2023-09-25T00:00:00 (this is necessary for both time-critical and non-time critical observations).

    Change log:

    • Image 8 (released November 2022): You can now predict observing windows up to July 2028. The download guide, installation guide, and user guide were updated to reflect these changes.

     

    Last updated 2 Mar 2023