Starry Night Pro Updating Databases - Asteroid / Minor Planets

[davewaldo]

Hi Everyone,

I've been having trouble recently getting my version of Starry Night 6 Pro to show some objects.

As seen in this thread (http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/showthread.php?t=63148) I had an unknown object in an image I took.

But try as I might I can't update the asteroid database to show this object "700 Auravictrix".

I've found all sorts of databases but none of them contain this object. One reason why I wanted a good planetarium program was so I could identify and hunt down these obscure objects.

Can anyone help?

I've downloaded all the latest updates from Starry Night for both the software and the databases but still no luck. I've also googled for hours trying to find databases which contain this object which is also known as 1910 KE, A893 FB or 1951 VE. But I've had no luck. Its not so much that I want this specific object but more that I want to know I have all / most of the objects I'm likely to be able to image. After all this minor planet is mag 13.3 which is quite easily imaged.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. :thumbsup:

Dave.

[mithrandir]

Here's the row for Auravictrix taken from MPCORB.DAT

00700 11.2 0.15 K1014 12.78026 100.98611 96.94078 6.78714 0.1039735 0.29609134 2.2293876 0 MPO 77283 716 34 1893-2005 0.54 M-v 38h Goffin 0000 (700) Auravictrix 20050204Does SNP accept data in MPC format? The SNP versions of the MPC files are at http://www.minorplanetcenter.org/iau/Ephemerides/Soft07.html but that's only a subset of data.

JPL Horizons data for 700 Auravictrix (1910 KE)

$$SOE
2455383.500000000 = A.D. 2010-Jul-06 00:00:00.0000 (CT)
EC= 1.038599017070933E-01 QR= 1.997644304859518E+00 IN= 6.787286475642505E+00
OM= 9.693958563340746E+01 W = 1.009774127077240E+02 Tp= 2455157.299432129599
N = 2.961356532728864E-01 MA= 6.698605293706262E+01 TA= 7.844728891802113E+01
A = 2.229165181498864E+00 AD= 2.460686058138212E+00 PR= 1.215659094139074E+03
$$EOE
Give it enough catalogs and CdC will display more objects that you want to know about.

[davewaldo]

Thank you for the info. Unfortunately I can't find a way for Starry Night to import the MPCORB.DAT file data. Starry night simply uses a .txt file containing the asteroid data.

So now I have the data, but does anyone know how to get the info contained in MPCORB.DAT into Starry Night?

[mithrandir]

Observable distant minor planets (http://www.minorplanetcenter.org/iau/Ephemerides/Distant/Soft07Distant.txt) is one example of data in SN format. Read the directions at the top.

Based on that, taking my data from Horizons:

Num Name Mag. a e i Node w L Epoch

700 Auravictrix 11.2 1.997644 0.103860 6.7873 96.9396 100.9774 66.9861 2455383.5
The only figure I'm not sure of is L, but it appears to be MA (Mean anomaly). Mind you, using H as a guestimate of magnitude is a bit sus.

[davewaldo]

Thanks Andrew, I appreciate your efforts. :thumbsup:

I understand that I can manually configure the data to put it into Starry Night format however I'm loooking for a way I can automatically import the MPCORB data, otherwise I've got a few hundred thousand objects to translate!:eyepop:

I'll keep looking, its a shame, 'The Sky' software seems to make this so easy.

Dave.

EDIT: Also now that I have a proper look, even that file which says its formatted for Starry Night seems to be in a very different order to the file used by Starry Night.

[higginsdj]

Yes, one of the pitfalls of this software for minor planet work. You might want to look at an option like Astroplanner (its a cheap option as well). Not as fancy as Starry Night but for astronomical palnning purposes it is far, far superior.

The alternative would be to write a script (VBA or the like) to reformat the file for you.

[mithrandir]

It should be a "reasonably simple" bit of Perl to convert MPCORB.DAT into SN format. Try the attached script. If you aren't running a *nix system, download ActivePerl (http://www.activestate.com/activeperl) and the right version of wget for your O/S.

It fetches the current version of:

mpc5000.dat - 1st 5000 entries from MPCORB.DAT - edit by CdC maintainers

NEA.txt PHA.txt Distant.txt Unusual.txt - from MPC

The row order shouldn't matter. As long as the columns are in the right order.

[davewaldo]

Thanks again for your help!



Thats just it.... the columns are all mixed up.

This is starting to get a bit beyond me, I don't really understand why the normal update doesn't download more than a handful of objects. Perhaps I'll write to the Starry Night people.

Dave.

[mithrandir]

No problemo. I'm just sitting here fighting off another dose of flu so offering ideas is something to amuse me.

From what I can deduce from the SN doco online, their data comes from Lowell Observatory's astorb.dat (currently about 140MB), and SNP only loads the first 100 rows of data.

If you have a genuine SN asteroids.txt file you could send me, assuming I can work out what is what it shouldn't take long to reorder the output from MPC for you.

[davewaldo]

Thats very kind thankyou Andrew.

Here is the SN asteroid file. http://www.davidwalden.com.au/stars/Asteroids.txt

[mithrandir]

Dave,

The SN file is in astorb.dat format, other than the object numbers being changed, and there being one less blank at the start of each line.

Why they changed the object number is beyond me. It makes no sense for the numbers to differ from the official ones.

Rather than trying to fudge the data from MPC or Horizons, I suggest you follow the instructions to get astorb.dat from Lowell:

http://www.naic.edu/~nolan/astorb.html (http://www.naic.edu/%7Enolan/astorb.html)

Once you have the base files, rather than downloading the whole thing to get updates, you can get the add/delete packets from the instructions further down the page. You only want the ones newer than the astorb.dat file you downloaded.

Then just cut/paste the ones you want into Asteroids.txt

You might have to change the object number to avoid duplicates, and if the comment about SNP only loading the first 100 (another strange idea - something to do with performance?) is correct, put your additions in the first 100 rows.

Otherwise I'd suggest CdC "Sky Charts" http://www.ap-i.net/skychart/ version 3.1 patch level 1340 or newer which will load as much of MPCORB.DAT as you want.

Andrew

[davewaldo]

Cool, it feels like we're getting somewhere. I'm downloading the astorb file now.

If I wanted all the objects, do you think I could just cut out all the SN entries and paste all the astorb entries. Then there will be no duplicate numbers?

I think I can tell SN to load as many object at start up as I choose.

I'll look into it.

Thanks again. :)

[davewaldo]

IT WORKED!!!! The LITTLE RIPPER!

Thank you Andrew SO MUCH for your help. I can usually sort these sorts of computer things out myself but this one had me stumped!

I simply deleted all of SN's entries and pasted the entire astorb contents.

I then told SN to load the first 10,000. It took perhaps 30sec longer to load but now it shows the asteroid I've been searching for!

You'd think SN would offer support pages to mention how to do this. Its not hard now you've shown me what to do.

As for updating... do asteroid orbits need to be updated regularly? Or would this just be to add newly discovered objects?

Thanks again,

Dave.

[mithrandir]

A pleasure - especially since it worked. :D


My copy has 527,415 rows. Good thing you only picked the first 10,000.



There will be newbies, and with ongoing observations there are always refinements to the orbital elements.

[higginsdj]

How do you tell SN to load more than the first 100?

[davewaldo]

In preferences there is a box to enter the number you want. But I believe its only an option on Starry Night Pro not the lower versions.

[higginsdj]

I have Pro Plus. Found the option and set it to 40000. Still waiting for it to load/open......

[mithrandir]

Patience Grasshopper.

Depending on the box, 40,000 might be overkill. Dave settled for 10,000. It would not surprise me if the load time was quadratic - 2x the objects, 4x the time.

[higginsdj]

I killed the app after 20 minutes of waiting for it to load. It appears evident that there may be some issues here. Since my Mac has 8gb of RAM, even if they load it all into memory there shouldn't be an issue.

The Starry Night Support people also appeared surprised that I would want to do this )load so many Minor Planets). I was trying out ACP Planners link to Starry night to create Observing Plans for ACP. I might just stick to Astroplanner instead, it loads the file contents (all 530,000 odd objects) in about 1 minute.

Cheers

David

[davewaldo]

Hi David, I'll try to tell mine to load 50,000 and see how it goes. I'll report back.

Have you tried telling it to only do 10,000 and did that work?

When loading 10,000 it takes about 2-3 times as long as when it was only loading 200 or so... But even then its only about 30secs longer.

I'll let you know if it works for me.

Dave.

[davewaldo]

OK, so reporting back... I told my SN pro to load 50,000 asteroids on startup.

When I restarted it I reckon it took about 10mins to start! But once it was going it was fine. The program basically seemed dead but it came good after 10mins or so. When they were all loaded pretty much everywhere you looked there was several asteroids :D

I've put mine back to 5000 and will only up the load amount when I need them.

My mac also has 8gb of ram (Mac Pro 8core). So maybe David you just need to leave the program go a bit longer.

I don't think my machine would handle 100,000 very well though, let alone the 500 od thousand in the database :)

Dave.