Get_Net software for astrometric observations

This page created and last updated 19 May 2001

As discussed on the Minor Planet Mailing List, I've written a little piece of code to automate the process of generating a list of reference nets used from a particular MPC station, given the file(s) that contain the original observation reports. You can click here to download the Get_Net executable for DOS, plus the .CPP source code (about 18 KBytes). (The source code should port readily to other OSes.)

I've assumed that some people keep every observation report as a separate file; others may store several reports per file; and some may have every observation report they've ever sent made in one big file. To use Get_Net, you'll have to assemble all the files on your hard drives, and make a text file giving a list of all the filenames. Let's say that this list is called (logically enough) mpc_file.dat, and that your MPC observing code is 307. In that case, you would run

get_net mpc_file.dat 307 

The results are stored in the file net_rep.dat. Obviously, those of you with multiple observatory codes may have to run this process more than once.

Note that Get_Net makes no judgments concerning the net names used. If it comes across, say, NET GSC, it will happily report that this was the net in use. I've already seen one instance where somebody used NET USNO A2.0 and, later, NET USNO-A2.0. Get_Net reported these as two different nets.

Get_Net assumes that any observation it finds used the reference net mentioned in the preceding NET statement. If it finds an observation with no preceding NET statement, it'll show an error message and halt.