New version posted

Bill J Gray Oct 11 10:56 AM

Hello all,

I've made a few more fixes/improvements to Find_Orb, and the
result is posted at

http://www.projectpluto.com/find_orb.htm

...which is the 'release' page; there currently is no "in
development" version.

This is the first 'release' version since March. Quite a bit
has happened since then, and I'd recommend downloading the current
version. Features are:

- The Settings dialog now has a "comet parameters" model, so you
can fit the A1 and A2 parameters to a suitably well-observed object
(a comet usually has to be observed for some years before the effects
of these non-gravitational parameters will be noticed).

- Pseudo-MPECs now contain two very interesting (in my opinion)
links. One goes to the JPL orbit visualization tool, so you can
get a decent idea of what the orbit looks like. The second goes
directly to SkyMorph, so you can attempt precoveries.

In general, pseudo-MPEC links ought to work better (they sometimes
got a little mangled in odd cases).

- I wrestled a bit with problems caused by satellite observations
(from WISE, SOHO, and the STEREO probes). Those observations are
supposed to consume two consecutive 80-byte records, but some MPC
files kept putting them in odd orders. Eventually, I fixed up Find_Orb
to make no assumptions; satellite records can now come in any order,
and it'll figure it out. (And will provide a warning if it finds
the first record but not the second, and vice versa.)

Since WISE observations frequently appear on NEOCP, this is
no small matter.

-- I've added a "simplex" button to the main dialog. This does
an interesting sort of fit to data which includes some knowledge of
what asteroid orbits are usually like, so it shies away from
retrograde and near-light-speed solutions (unless nothing else
fits the data). I think it'll be a useful method to have in the
orbit solution arsenal.

Details on these changes (and other lesser changes) can be found
at the above URL; just go there and click on "recent changes".

-- Bill