Online asteroid data -> wish list?

[Steffen Möller]

Hello again,

On 3/13/18 9:50 AM, Steffen Möller wrote:
> Dear KStars-Team,
>
> There are multiple web sites out there that support amateur 
> astronomers with the prioritization of their asteroidal observations. 
> I mean, there is no chance for kstars to know this offline since only 
> the MPC knows when a newly reported asteroid needs a confirmation. 
> These are somewhat tricky at times in that even when you are granted 
> the opportunity to specify the geographic location of your telescope, 
> these do not necessarily state the exact time at which it is available 
> (which you need to ask for the ephemerides in a second step) or the 
> object is so low above the horizon that one would shy away from it. 
> So, I'd very much like to see these dynamically created web sites 
> auto-feed my wish list and fall back to the comfort of kstars.
>
> Would that be desirable? If so, then I propose to contact the 
> provider(s) of these web sites about the degree they want to support 
> any such project e.g. by a XML/JSON version of their output if they 
> don't have it already or the parsing could be a first code 
> contribution of mine. These sites also differ in the extra information 
> these offer about the asteroid. Once could such also consider to 
> extend the data model that represents asteroids in kstars with such 
> dynamic information. To mind comes the date at which the asteroid was 
> last observed.
>
> Please kindly instruct me about what I should do towards any such 
> development.

I received a reply by Valentin who suggested to import such files 
manually. I was not ultimately happy about that suggestion, I must 
admit, since to me it was important to see the workflow as a whole 
somehow represented from within kstars. But he may have a point. The MPC 
offers both XML and json files here https://minorplanetcenter.net/data 
and the http://www.minorplanetcenter.net/Extended_Files/neocp.json in 
particular seems of interest to me.

So, I'll then prepare a script to download that file, pimp it for an 
import to kstars and report about it here.

Steffen