2022-09-25, 08:55 PM
I'm hoping that this rock gets recovered. Such an enigma. Here are the info pages from SkyTools. Just one point of fact. The positions generated by Horizons (JPL) appear to only be ~3° off the Lowell position vs 93.5° off the MPC position for date 25 Sept 19:00CDT 2022. For some reason, I was under the impression that the MPC fed elements to Lowell who then precessed to the common epoch.
The precessing is pretty involved. Maybe why it takes a good bit of CPU time via ST interface.
Ignoring relativity and oblateness, (minor stuff), it's mostly algorithms, rather than math. Newton's law of gravitation is involved, as well the solution to Kepler's equation. But stand alone on my old PC, the fact that 29k+ element epochs can be rewritten in just 35 seconds. Someone else spent several months writing the software to solve Kepler's equation, with several improvements over the years. I'm just a mouse clicker. LOL
The precessing is pretty involved. Maybe why it takes a good bit of CPU time via ST interface.
Ignoring relativity and oblateness, (minor stuff), it's mostly algorithms, rather than math. Newton's law of gravitation is involved, as well the solution to Kepler's equation. But stand alone on my old PC, the fact that 29k+ element epochs can be rewritten in just 35 seconds. Someone else spent several months writing the software to solve Kepler's equation, with several improvements over the years. I'm just a mouse clicker. LOL