Re: {MPML} Asteroid K11K15S in 2003 images ?

Bill J Gray Sep 11, 2011

Hi Alessandro,

> is there any chance that object AAAAA (visible in SkyMorph images and not
> identified by Astplot) and K11K15S are the same asteroid ?

Yes, I'm reasonably confident that they are.

> In this case I am unable to use Find_Orb to collect all the measurements together.

That's because Find_Orb is not very good at doing this sort of thing.
I've been working on this a bit of late, but am still not very happy with
the results; it requires a lot of human intervention. I've described a way
to link arcs in Find_Orb, using your AAAAA/2011 KS15 case as an example, at

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

Sort of a quick-and-dirty "how to link" tutorial for Find_Orb users.

I've found that I can almost always replicate linkages found by MPC and
reported on Daily Orbit Updates. Actually _finding_ such linkages in the
first place... well, that'll take some more work, for which I may or may
not have time! I've ideas that would either reduce the computational
complexity of the problem, or "solve" the complexity by just writing
a program that anyone could download, thereby distributing the work over
a slew of machines. As the DOUs illustrate, there are a lot of linkages
to be done among currently unlinked arcs.

-- Bill