Hi Gajowy,
It's well past time that I documented this! As it happens,
I _have_ "sort of" documented it; I got an inquiry about
this subject via private e-mail about half a year ago.
Much of what follows is recycled (with some updates) from
what I wrote back then.
The following documentation is not exactly complete. But
it ought to get you up and going... and may get _me_ up and
going for actually documenting this on my Web site.
-- Bill
-------------- Command-line Find_Orb on Windows ---------
There has been a command-line version running under Linux (or
*BSD or OS/X) for some years now. It's the basic engine behind
my on-line NEOCP page at
https://www.projectpluto.com/neocp2/summary.htm
I have a script on the server which, once an hour, runs
the command-line version of Find_Orb (known as 'fo') to generate
pseudo-MPECs for everything currently on NEOCP.
People running 'fo' on non-Windows platforms download the
source code and compile it. This is not something your average
Windows user wants to have to do. It can, of course, be done;
Daniel Parrott has provided a nice guide to doing so with
Microsoft Visual Studio at
https://www.projectpluto.com/temp/build_instructions.pdf
But I've provided a pre-built 'fo.exe', and the rest of
this will assume you'll just use that.
You should first have the "traditional" Windows GUI Find_Orb
set up and running to your satisfaction. (Which you probably
do.) The command-line Windows Find_Orb will piggyback off that,
borrowing settings and files for things such as the JPL ephemerides,
default ephemeris settings, and so forth. If you've set up GUI
Find_Orb to generate ephemerides that contain radial velocities,
then (at least by default) the command-line Find_Orb will use
that setting as well.
Next, download the ZIPped executable :
https://www.projectpluto.com/temp/fo.zip
(about 599 KBytes) and unZIP its contents into the folder
containing the "traditional" Windows GUI Find_Orb. You're then
ready to run fo.exe from a command line. You can just run
fo (filename)
where 'filename' contains the astrometry in question. I
just ran it on a file with four new objects from NEOCP. On
the screen, I got an "executive summary", giving me a
little information about each object :
Processing 4 objects
1: C15C4C2; a=1.099, q=0.974, e=0.113, i=9 H=26.5 MOID 0.031 23 obs; 2019 Oct. 8-10
2: P10SBuQ; a=2.064, q=1.136, e=0.449, i=3 H=24.3 MOID 0.138 8 obs; 2019 Oct. 7-9 (41.2 hr)
3: P10SBxr; a=1.821, q=1.678, e=0.079, i=22 H=20.5 8 obs; 2019 Oct. 7-9 (43.0 hr)
4: P10SyjK; a=2.389, q=1.590, e=0.335, i=1 H=20.6 14 obs; 2019 Sept. 25-Oct. 10
Meanwhile, the following files were made :
'mpc_fmt.txt' with elements for each object, in the MPCORB
format. (Which means anything parabolic or hyperbolic would have
to be skipped, and long-period orbits would have poor precision.)
'total.json', which has elements, MOIDs, observations, and
residuals for each object.
'elements.txt', which has orbital elements in the MPC eight-line
format, plus some additional data (the state vector and MOID data
you get when you click on the orbital elements window in GUI Find_Orb.)
Ephemerides are a little trickier. If you run
fo (filename) -e (ephemeris filename)
you'll get, in addition to the output described above, an
ephemeris file... giving you ephems for the last object only. As
described above, it'll "borrow" whatever ephemeris settings you
had in GUI Find_Orb.
There is a twist to this : if you select 'computer friendly' output,
then 'total.json' will contain ephemerides for each object. So you
_can_ actually get ephemerides for each object... though I realize
that not everybody is a fan of the JSON format.
It is possible to set the ephemeris start date/time, step
size, and number of steps on the command line. For example,
fo (filename) (other options) "EPHEM_START=2019 Jan 13 10:00" "EPHEM_STEPS=40 1h"
would cause the ephemerides to start at that time, and give
you 40 entries with a one-hour spacing. The start date/time has
the same wide degree of flexibility as other date inputs in Find_Orb.
The following command-line options are available :
-e (filename) Direct the ephemeris output to that filename.
-E (options) Reset quantities output to ephemerides. If you
skip this, you'll just get whatever output options were
set the last time you ran Find_Orb, so it may be more
convenient just to run that program and generate an example
of the sort of output you want. The quantities can be any
combination of :
3 Alt/az output
4 Radial velocity
5 Apparent angular motion (default is total motion and PA)
6 Phase angle
8 Ground track (lat/lon/alt)
9 When combined with 5, show separate RA/dec motions
10 Round to nearest step. If the ephem starts at 03:14:15.9
and the step size is one minute, the first output will
be for 03:14.
11 Phase angle bisector
12 Heliocentric ecliptic lat/lon
13 Topocentric ecliptic lat/lon
14 Visibility indicator (sun/moon/twilight).
15 Suppress unobservable ephemeris data (below horizon, sunlit)
16 Show ephemeris uncertainties
17 Computer-friendly output. Dates are in JD, RA/dec in decimal
degrees, etc. Distances are always in AU, instead of
switching to km for close objects. And so on.
18 Output MOIDs for eight planets. Helpful to show how the MOID
for a given planet changes with time.
19 Space velocity (i.e., total speed of the object relative to
the observer, not just the radial component given by 4)
20 Lunar elongation
21 _Don't_ show RA/dec
22 _Don't_ show distance between observer and target
23 _Don't_ show distance between object and sun
24 _Don't_ show elongation from the sun
25 Show sun's altitude
26 Show sun's azimuth
27 Show moon's altitude
28 Show moon's azimuth
You can combine these in a reasonably straightforward way; for example,
to tell fo to show alt/az, phase angle, heliocentric and topocentric
ecliptic coordinates, and the visibility indicator (quantities 3, 6, 12-14),
you would use -E 3,6,12-14.
-C (MPC code) Reset MPC code for which ephems are generated. Similarly,
you can skip this and just use the code from the last ephemeris.
On 10/10/19 5:40 PM, p476jaotyfdxp7etq7jlp3k2yzfkkhnbpxz6hts5@... [find_orb] wrote:
>
>
> Is there any way to run Find_Orb as a command line tool under Windows? It would be useful to run it in a batch mode.
>
> KR,
> Gajowy
>
>
>
>
>