Re: [find_orb] 'mpcorb.dat' vs. 'virtual.txt'

Bill J Gray Feb 18, 2012

Hi Alessandro,

When creating virtual asteroids (either via Monte Carlo or via statistical ranging),
the elements for each object are always added to 'mpcorb.dat'. (They are also added
in eight-line format to 'state.txt', which also stores the state vectors and MOIDs.)

If the VA also happens to be within the sphere of influence of a planet, then the
planet-centric elements are also output to 'virtual.txt'. These are in a completely
different format, because the MPCORB one can't handle anything but elliptical,
heliocentric elements.

-- Bill

Alessandro wrote:
>
> Thanks Bill!
>
> If it can help, the previous Windows versions had also a strange behaviour; sometimes
> the virtual asteroid file was called mpcorb and other times it was a file called
> "virtual" ...unfortunately I do not remember exactly from where I downloaded those
> versions,but as you say this is not really important once the bug is corrected in
> the last version.
>
> --Alessandro