Supply astrometry (either upload a file or cut-and-paste into a text box), and Find_Orb will compute an orbit, residuals, and ephemerides. Note that the on-line version is a stripped-down version of the Find_Orb software.
Supply astrometry (either upload a file or cut-and-paste into a text box), and Sat_ID will list satellites in that area with similar motion. This won't identify every artificial satellite; new ones are occasionally found. But it's usually pretty good.
Also note that the page lists IDs for artsats that appeared on NEOCP.
I compute TLEs ( Two-Line Elements) for several artsats in high (multi-day) orbits, based on astrometry gathered for the artsats by asteroid observers. You get one file per object, containing TLEs for a given year or two. This page lets you get all TLEs available for a particular moment you specify.
Lists all objects currently on the NEOCP, giving magnitudes, current uncertainty in the ephemeris position and what it'll be a day from now, MOIDs, etc. The idea is to help in figuring out which objects really ought to be followed up, which can be followed up later, and which ones are "lost".
For a given date/time and MPC code, this will give you accurate positions for all visible GPS and other Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) sats. Really verifying that the time reported with your astrometry is actually the time the object was observed is extremely difficult; it's not enough just to sync your computer to NTP or GPS. Timing errors are rampant in astrometry. Navigation satellites have well-determined ephemerides and move fast (about 35" per second), making timing errors very obvious and easy to measure. Even a 1/10 second error will show up as a 3.5" difference in the object's position in your image.
Once you've picked out a good satellite (one at high elongation and well above your horizon), you can generate an ephemeris for a particular GPS/GNSS satellite, observe it, and compare the computed and observed positions. You can also upload your GPS/GNSS astrometry to get analysis of your timing and "cross-track" errors.
Click here for an overview on why you ought to check your timing this way, and how to go about it.
MPC maintains a list of the most recent MPECs. My index covers all of them, and gives you a little summary of orbital parameters and observers for each object.
And vice versa. Also handles base-60 to decimal and conversions to/from Cartesian coordinates.
Supply astrometry (either upload a file or cut-and-paste into a text box), and AstCheck will list asteroids in that area moving with that motion. This is roughly similar to MPC's MPChecker (Minor Planet Checker), but it's somewhat faster and takes the object's motion into account, not just its position. That allows it to make identifications with some confidence even if the object is off prediction.
Given a date/time, position on the earth, position in the sky, and field size, this will list the artificial satellites in that field. This can be useful just for identifying which object went through an image, or could be used in advance to make sure nothing will be passing through the image. Though note that the tool currently only considers artsats in the field at that exact time. If your exposure is long enough, it could miss something.
Click here if you have many fields to check for artsats.
Here, you don't have to supply astrometry. Just enter the object name (can be any MPC designation, or a name such as 'Icarus', or a current NEOCP designation), and it'll compute an ephemeris for your location.
Similar to the above, but for artsats. This is something of a work in progress; the idea is to provide a replacement for the long-discontinued Distant Artificial Satellites Observations (DASO) Page the MPC used to maintain.
For ground-based observations, we can just look up the observer's location. Given an observatory code, we can find the latitude/longitude/altitude. Spacecraft move; observations from (C49) STEREO-A, (C57) TESS, (250) Hubble, etc. have to be accompanied by a second 80-column record telling you where the spacecraft was when the observation was made. The formatting has to be exactly right, and generating these "second records" can be error-prone. The above page lets you enter/upload "first record" spacecraft observations and will return both records.
The MPC's list of observatory codes gives you the code, longitude, parallax constants, and observatory name. The list on this site adds latitude, altitude, and 'region' (usually a country, sometimes a smaller civil/geographic division), and links to G__gle™ and Bing® maps.
The MPC is not a reliable source of radar data. I believe their radar inputs are currently "broken", and probably won't be fixed until the transition to the new ADES format is complete. In the meantime, you can click here for all current publicly available radar astrometry in the traditional, 80-column format. (Which is fine. ADES is very important for optical data, but doesn't add much for radar.)
The same page provides a tool to download just the radar data for a specific object.
C/C++ source code for most of these projects, and a variety of other astronomy-related software.
Many of these tools are accessed via a GET interface, meaning
that if you run them in a browser, you'll see the URL that would
access that data. For example, if you go to the
radar data page
and enter 2019 UG12
, you will see the URL
https://projectpluto.com/cgi-bin/misc/cgiradar?desig=2019+UG12
Handling other objects should be fairly obvious. Similarly, the artsat ephemeris page, the parallax-to-lat/lon/alt converter, GPS/GNSS tools, and the tool to list artsats in a given field of view can be readily deciphered. In some cases, the URLs can be pretty long, but you can omit the default fields.
I fairly consistently use GET when small amounts of data are involved, but POST is required if (for example) files may be uploaded. However, all tools can be used with GET (and are therefore accessible via API) if the data involved is small enough. Documentation lags here; please let me know if API access to a particular tool would help you out. Such access almost certainly already exists.
The ephemeris generator page uses GET. Ask for default ephems for 2023 WQ3, starting on 2023 December 03, for 20 one-hour steps, and the resulting URL is
https://www.projectpluto.com/cgi-bin/fo/fo_serve.cgi?obj_name=2023+WQ3&year=2023+dec+03&n_steps=20&stepsize=1h&mpc_code=500&faint_limit=99&ephem_type=0&sigmas=on&element_center=-2&epoch=default&resids=0&language=e&file_no=0
Note that because these are default ephemerides, you really don't
need to specify anything from mpc_code=
on. That is
to say, you can truncate the above URL to read
https://www.projectpluto.com/cgi-bin/fo/fo_serve.cgi?obj_name=2023+WQ3&year=2023+dec+03&n_steps=20&stepsize=1h
If you wished to specify, say, JSON ephemerides, you would add &file_no=3 :
https://www.projectpluto.com/cgi-bin/fo/fo_serve.cgi?obj_name=2023+WQ3&year=2023+dec+03&n_steps=20&stepsize=1h&file_no=3
A little experimentation will show how other parameters can be modified.