Sunflower Observatory 739 Follow Up Page

This page allows you to generate ephemerides for any of the minor planets discovered by Sunflower Observatory in Olathe, Kansas. In addition, you can download sets of orbital elements suitable for downloading into various popular planetarium-type software packages.

Astrometric observations of any of the following objects should be sent directly to mpc@cfa.harvard.edu. Updated orbits will be available automatically through this page.

Display ephemerides or summary

The following objects are available:

Options:

By default, ephemerides are geocentric, begin now and are for 20 days at 1 day intervals. The desired start date for the ephemeris should be entered in YYYY MM DD format, e.g., 1998 July 19 = 1998 07 19. Note that these ephemerides are intended to assist current observations only.

Start date for ephemerides: Number of dates to output

Ephemeris interval: Ephemeris units: days hours

Observatory code:

Display motions as: "/min "/hr °/day

Total motion and direction Separate R.A. and Decl. motions

Format for elements output:

none;
MPC;
SkyMap (SkyMap Software);
Guide (Project Pluto);
xephem (E. Downey);
Home Planet (J. Walker);
MyStars! (Relative Data Products);
TheSky (Software Bisque);
Starry Night (Sienna Software);
Deep Space (D. S. Chandler);
PC-TCS (D. Harvey);
Earth Centered Universe (Nova Astronomics);
Dance of the Planets (ARC);
MegaStar V4.x (E.L.B. Software);
SkyChart 2000.0 (Southern Stars Software);

If you select MPC format the elements will be displayed with the ephemerides. If you select any format other than MPC format only the elements are returned. In such cases your browser should download the elements file and save it to your local disk.

Supplementary Information

Summary
The summary lists the current J2000.0 coordinates, visual magnitude and solar elongation of the selected minor planets, as well as information on the date of last observation (where available), forthcoming opposition data and details on the orbit. The opposition date lists the date of the next opposition and the declination and visual magnitude at that time.

Elements
The elements supplied are the latest published elements for the specified objects. Elements will be found even if the designation you enter is a non-principal designation in an identification or if the object has been numbered.

Ephemerides can be supplied for objects with only Väisälä elements, but the elements themselves are not supplied.

Ephemerides
The ephemerides supplied are unperturbed. Ephemerides from perturbed orbit solutions are generated from elements at the nearest 200-day epoch. The accuracy of the ephemerides for most objects will be entirely sufficient to locate the objects for current astrometric observation. Objects must be identified in images by their motion, not by their apparent closeness to a predicted position.

The time-scale of the supplied ephemerides is strictly TT (Terrestrial Time). For practical purposes the difference between TT and UT (Universal Time), currently a little over 1 minute, may be ignored.

If you desire a topocentric ephemeris, enter your observatory code in the appropriate box. As an aide-mémoire, the packed form of the object's designation (as used on the astrometric observation record) is displayed immediately above the ephemeris.

This service utilises the Minor Planet Ephemeris Service, courtesty of the IAU's Minor Planet Center. It has been made possible by Process Software Corporation, and their excellent VMS Web server, Purveyor.