Online asteroid data -> wish list?

[Steffen Möller]

Hello,

On 3/16/18 3:07 PM, Jasem Mutlaq wrote:

> If you have a method to automate this process, we can include it in 
> KStars.
I now created a small to tool and tried

wget -O - https://www.minorplanetcenter.net/Extended_Files/neocp.json | 
./neocp2kstars

which gives me

#catalog id longname RA Decl type magnitude
neocp 0 A106yEM 9.8501 -37.3746 255 17.3
neocp 1 ZFA1276 12.9752 19.5189 255 20.9
neocp 2 ZFA142F 16.1963 17.7824 255 20.4
neocp 3 ZFA13B2 15.2812 16.1363 255 20
neocp 4 ZFA1343 14.0707 13.71 255 18.5

.....

Source code is at http://functional.domains/kstars/ .  There is 
apparently object type for asteroids since kstars knows the ephemerides, 
right? For this particular page, one does not really need to know much 
more than that the NEO is listed on it and thus help is needed, I tend 
to think. The magnitude is the most important parameter so the user can 
decide if the object is likely to be visible with the telescope and 
seing conditions. And then the user retrieves online the ephemerides for 
the objects of interest. For other lists, one may be tempted to want to 
know a bit morem i.e. more than the catalog is currently prepared for.

> But we're getting our astroid data from JPL and not MPC, so that's the 
> problem here.

To the best of my little understanding of the whole process, the neocp 
are not part of the catalogs, yet, so this should be fine wrt redundancy.

I am too new with this all to make any judgement on how likely it is to 
expect differences/inconsistencies for numbered objects between the 
institutions' generated web sites and what kstars computes.

> Perhaps we can support more than one source of data.

This would be nice. Another list that I would like to see is

https://www.minorplanetcenter.net/iau/NEO/LastObsNEO.html

The MPC also offers a text file of that content which I happily also 
transform.

Maybe it would help to introduce the concept of temporary validity of 
such star data. For any conflicting information the data in kstars 
should be superior I tend to think since it can determine the asteroidal 
positions for any time, right? Just for objects unknown to kstars one 
would like to see that data added. Extra information on the type of 
asteroid (hazardous or not, ...) and when it was last found would be 
nice to address, too.

Many thanks and regards,

Steffen


>
>
> On Fri, Mar 16, 2018 at 5:04 PM, Steffen Möller 
> <steffen_moeller at gmx.de <mailto:steffen_moeller at gmx.de>> wrote:
>
>     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
>     <https://minorplanetcenter.net/data> and the
>     http://www.minorplanetcenter.net/Extended_Files/neocp.json
>     <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
>
>