Hello all,
The "in development" version of Find_Orb at
http://home.gwi.net/~pluto/devel/find_orb.htm
has some new features for ephemeris output. It'll still default to
showing "observables" such as RA/dec, magnitude, and so on; and one
can also have radial velocity, phase angle, and so on displayed. But
one can also get state vector output and tables of orbital elements,
and compute times of close approach of an object to the Earth, Moon,
or other planet.
Also, when you click on an observation, the reference catalog used
for that observation (UCAC-3, GSC, USNO-B1, etc.) will be shown. I
also fixed a bug in reading .rwo-formatted (AstDyS) data.
Also, the "mean residual" shown in the orbital elements should now
match that shown on MPC-created orbital elements. I'd recommend
upgrading to this version.
A couple of weeks ago, I announced on MPML that I'd produced an
off-line version of the MPC's MPChecker service. Based on some feedback,
I've made some significant improvements:
http://home.gwi.net/~pluto/devel/astcheck.htm
In particular, asteroids are now checked on the basis of both
position _and_ motion. This seemingly simple step makes the checking
much better; it means a larger search radius can be used without giving
you a huge table of meaningless matches, so you have some hope of
being able to identify objects even when they are far off the nominal
prediction. (Exactly how far off remains to be seen. I think matches
could be found within several degrees in most cases, but for the nonce,
I'm leaving the default search radius at one degree.)
Also, matching can be done against either 'astorb.dat' or 'mpcorb.dat'.
As always, feedback is welcome.
-- Bill