Note that on the home page of Arkansas Sky Observatory (www.arksky.org) is download
link to an original program that will sort all current epoch data for both comets and
asteroids - MPECsort application.

A special provision has been developed at the Minor Planet Center just for this
program to facilitate daily updates of major NEOs of interest as well as comets. The
program has been designed for general use but there is a "Charon" and Guide 8"
application that allows mpcorb.dat and neatod.dat asteroid files to be sorted based
on your required parameters. Comet sorting is similar, but provides elements for
general applications for current epochs, based on each day's MPC Daily Orbital Update
(DOU); the update to the MPECsort is immediate upon the DOU update each morning
around 2 a.m. EST.

The program is free and can really improve your efficiency in planning nightly
observing.

Dr. Clay
_____
Arkansas Sky Observatories
MPC H45 - Petit Jean Mountain South
MPC H41 - Petit Jean Mountain
MPC H43 - Conway West
http://www.arksky.org/

----- Original Message -----
From: "Bill J Gray" <pluto@...>
To: <guide-user@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, February 16, 2012 12:03 PM
Subject: Re: [guide-user] Comets.dat file


> Hi Ben,
>
> Ben Hudgens wrote:
>> Err, you can disregard my previous inquiry about comets.dat....
>> Found an explanation message from several months ago.
>
> Just to recap for the curious: there is no general file of
> elements for all comets, the way there is for asteroids. Guide
> has to take the "currently observable comets" elements from
> MPC and merge them in with previous data.
>
> This is quite imperfect, on many counts. If you skip comet
> updates for a few months, a comet or two may come and go without
> Guide ever being aware of it. The bizarre comet designation
> scheme means that comets can appear twice, once under their
> original designation and again under their permanent designation;
> Guide can't tell that they're both really the same object. The
> MPC list omits all but the biggest and brightest SOHO comets.
>
> I've ideas for getting around this, which will involve using
> Patrick Rocher's orbital elements from IMCCE (formerly the
> Bureau des Longitudes) :
>
> http://www.imcce.fr/fr/ephemerides/donnees/comets/ASCII/ELTDAT.TXT
>
> Doing so could fix most of these issues, except for the SOHO
> comets... but there's one drawback: the above list is not updated
> as frequently as the MPC one. So I may have to take Patrick's
> list and patch in holes using the MPC data. Plus additional
> patching-in of "ancient" comets and further patching-in of SOHO
> ones, probably using JPL's data... the life of a programmer of
> astronomy software is rarely an easy one!
>
> -- Bill
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: Ben Hudgens
>> To: guide-user@yahoogroups.com
>> Sent: Wednesday, February 15, 2012 5:31 PM
>> Subject: [guide-user] Comets.dat file
>>
>>
>>
>> Using Guide 9.0 I d/l comet updates through "Extras", Comets/Asteroids Options..
>> Add MPC Comets/Asteroids button. Why is this new file showing so few comets
>> (currently only 214) and from where does this file get downloaded?
>>
>> If I d/l the comet update file from Bill's link at
>> http://www.projectpluto.com/comets.dat , that file currently shows 959 comets,
>> including the latest new comet from a few days ago.
>>
>> Ben
>>
>
>
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