Re: Find_Orb Wish List

Andrew Lowe Apr 26, 2011

Thanks Bill, any progress would be appreciated.

Andrew

--- In find_orb@yahoogroups.com, Bill J Gray <pluto@...> wrote:
>
> Hi Andrew,
>
> > 1. Any chance that you could add the "uncertainty parameter" as defined
> > by the MPC to the orbital solution?
>
> Some small chance, at least. I've long thought Find_Orb should
> provide uncertainties for orbital elements and ephemerides. With the
> Monte Carlo and statistical ranging methods in place, it can look at
> the distribution of those data and compute sigmas... which leads to the
> U parameter without much trouble.
>
> A few months ago, I also dug into the issues of computing uncertainties
> from the covariance matrix, and have made at least a little progress on
> that front.
>
> > 2. Under "Make Ephemeris", would it be possible to have today's date in
> > the "Start" window as the default, or at least have a push button to add
> > today's date to the window with one click?
>
> I've just implemented the latter. The version already posted already
> allow one to enter, for example, "+0" to get the current time, or "-18h"
> for eighteen hours ago, and so on; clicking on the new "Now" button will
> just set the start time to "+0".
>
> One slight issue with this is that "+0" means _right now_, not the
> nearest or previous midnight. I've also just added a "round to nearest
> step" checkbox. Click on that button, and an ephemeris run at
> 2011 April 25 16:44:13 UT would begin on 2011 April 25 00:00 UT (for a
> one-day step size), or at 16:00 on that day (for a one-hour step size),
> or at 16:44 (for a one-minute step size).
>
> > 3. On the main page, is it possible to define a fixed-width font so that
> > the display of the elements "line up" properly?
>
> I tackled this quite a while ago, without success. But since then,
> I've made the ephemerides box fixed-width... and it turns out that the same
> trick works with the orbital elements box.
>
> That's the good news. Bad news is that with a fixed-width font, the
> elements are too wide to fit in the box. I may have to rearrange the main
> Find_Orb dialog to accommodate a wider element display... which isn't a
> bad idea; that dialog has "just grown" with new options, and a total
> rearrangement is overdue anyway.
>
> -- Bill
>