Orbital Elements for asteroid imaging

lukas_demetz

As noted in the features post, we added the possibility to use orbital elements for imaging. This is very useful if you want to image an asteroid or NEO without having to pay for the fixed time request. And it works like this:

Go to https://www.minorplanetcenter.net/iau/NEO/pccp_tabular.html
Select the target you want to image. Set viewing point to geocentric, Display positions in decimal units, Separate R.A. and DEC motions, and full output, and hit the "Get" button:
You will get a list of orbital data, basically with a day and time, RA and DEC position. What we need to combine are those first data:

Best is to take a few of them spaced a few hours apart, so that you can cover the night, and concatenate them with an | in between, like this:
2021 06 24 10 16.3843 +24.619|2021 06 24 13 16.3799 +24.631|2021 06 24 16 16.3755 +24.643|2021 06 24 20 16.3696 +24.659

This would be the data to be inserted in the orbital elements field. That's it 😀

lukas_demetz

And well, for the easy-going of you, I also added the possibility to fetch current data straight from the MPC.
This feature has been added in the Bulk Imaging Request form:

Once you hit Get NEO data, the system will create one request per target and return it as a text for the Bulk request. You will then be able to finetune it and then submit it.
A little bit of magic is happening in the background. Among it, the exposure times are being corrected for the movement of the target (the faster, the shorter the exposure times will be, within a range 20 - 300 secs).

Also the total exposure time will be adjusted depending on the expected magnitude, between 5 and 15 minutes.

Lastly, the system will automatically create a repeating plan, as to catch the target three times with a distance of about half an hour between each set.

Note that this is all pretty experimental and might (and will) be adjusted as issues arise. It has been programmed for our professional observers.