Hi all,

I use the Extras | Use MPCORB option to display my limited set of asteroids in
Guide, for my project of observing the first 100 asteroids.

But, for some reason or other, as well as showing my asteroids, Guide also
displays the current position of various spacecraft, like the Mariner, Pioneer,
Venera and Voyager probes.

Testing a bit further reveals that these spacecraft are shown when asteroids
are. They are linked to the asteroid display. Wouldn't they belong to the
satellites category? I suspect that some of these probes now follow more
asteroid-like orbits, but I do not regard them as asteroids still.

Now, even if I were to agree that these things ought to be trated as asteroids,
I'd still like to know why Guide displays them when I use my own custom MPCORB
file. There's no data on the probes there. And there's no user dataset to turn
off either.

I'm only wondering really. Adjusting the mag limits get rid of them easily, as
they're all in the 20-something to way-too-faint-even-for-HST range.

Best regards,

Arild :)

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http://www.astro.uio.no/nas/
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