Updated Find_Orb is "official"

Bill Gray Aug 9, 2014

Hello all,

The "in-development" version posted about ten days ago is now the
"official", release version :

http://projectpluto.com/find_orb.htm

I made a few bug fixes relative to the "development" version. The
new version should now be quite reliable, and I strongly recommend
upgrading to it. Please let me know if you run into troubles!

Except for bug fixes, there will probably not be much new development
on Find_Orb for a bit. The next step I'd like to take, if time is
available, is to make improvements to make the program ready for Gaia
data. Gaia will supposedly be accurate to the level of 20 microarcseconds.
If this is even approximately true, it means some work for those of us in
the orbit determination business. We'll have to include more subtle effects
from general relativity and probably fine-tune numerical integration schemes.
Non-gravitational effects such as Yarkovsky and YORP may become noticeable,
and we'll have to figure them out without (in most cases) really knowing
much about the rotational state or physical characteristics of the asteroids.

We'll also have to be able to read RA/decs to higher precision than the
MPC's 80-column, punched card format supports, and be able to handle a lot
of asteroid perturbers. So far, those are the only pieces of the puzzle
I've actually implemented. But I'll probably have a lot of time before we
really see the data.

-- Bill