Where is Pallas ?

[carlomuccini]

Thanks Phil for the advice

I went into Minor Planet, deleted all the asteroids, and reloaded the brightest asteroids.
It worked

Carlo

[PMSchu]

Hi Carlo,

I'm glad that (2) Pallas is showing up in your minor planet database again. Also (2) Pallas is included in the Current Bright & Interesting Minor Planets data file that SkyTools can download every month. I just downloaded it today 2024 Apr 2 at ~1740 UT.

It seems that the epoch of osculation for (2) Pallas in my MP database is now 2024 April 1 13h54m40s after the download of the Current MP datafile for April. Here are the new elements:     

Phil S.

[PMSchu]

Hi Carlo,

I'm replying to your question in the Support Section about (376) Geometria missing from your minor planet database. That MP is not included in the Observing List of Current Bright & Interesting Minor Planets that my ST4v downloaded on 2024 Apr 2. I believe that the list of 'Bright' MPs that you downloaded from the MPC using SkyTools several days ago is the same list of MPs as the Current Bright & Interesting Minor Planets list with several distant objects like (136472) Makemake and (50000) Quaoar added. That OL only has 46 MPs in it. How many MPs are currently in your MP DB?

Since you deleted all of the MPs in your database, you'll need to add the additional missing MPs back in. ST4v allows you to choose which objects to add by checking the appropriate boxes when downloading MPCORB as shown here:     

Checking any of the boxes other than Bright will result in a download of many thousands (possibly >100,000) MPs to your database. The full MPCORB file contains orbits for ~1.3E^6 objects.

Hope this helps,

Phil S.

[theskyhound]

The Bright Minor Planets from the MPC is not the same as the one I curate as the Current Bright and Interesting Minor Planets. That MPC download is a filtered list of asteroids that internally does pretty much the same thing as the filtered search you show, with the numbered and bright only selections checked. Its not timely in any way.

[PMSchu]

Hi Greg,

So if only the Numbered and Bright boxes are checked, how many MPs would be downloaded? Would it be like 1 year's worth of the 'Current' objects that you provide? Do you know what causes the epoch of osculation to change to 2024 Apr 1 13h54m40s?

Phil S.

[theskyhound]

Hi Greg,

So if only the Numbered and Bright boxes are checked, how many MPs would be downloaded? Would it be like 1 year's worth of the 'Current' objects that you provide? Do you know what causes the epoch of osculation to change to 2024 Apr 1 13h54m40s?

Phil S.

Hi Phil,

It doesn't have anything to do with my current list. This set of minor planets is designed to allow people to get a manageable list of potentially observable minor planets with little effort. Its just a mpcobs download like this:

   

And it adds the requirement that the minor planet must be brighter than 16th magnitude, on the current date. There is also a test for some minor planets to see if they ever get as bright as magnitude 16 during the current year. The list is placed in the Automatically downloaded folder and is, of course, meant to be filtered for a specific telescope, location, night, etc.

I have no idea about the epochs. Its just what is currently available from the MPC. When they adopted the ridiculously long time between standard epochs a few years back they also started updating selected minor planets to a more recent epoch, but I don't know how or why they are selected.

[carlomuccini]

Hi

Let's say I "deleted" all the asteroids from the list: 

    MENU / Data / minor planets / Clean up Delete / Delete All Minor Planets

but it doesn't delete them all, about 47 remain

   

If I select an asteroid among those remaining, e.g. Urania and press DEL

   

asks for confirmation but doesn't delete anything.

I wonder if and how it is possible to completely empty the asteroid list and then reload them from MPCORB for example

Thank you

Carlo

[theskyhound]

Hello Carlo,

I am concerned that Phil has given you the idea that you need to delete them, but you probably don't. Is there an actual problem? If not, then stop worrying over it. Phil was a beta tester and possibly the heaviest user of minor planet data. His database was abused and then abused again. Most people should not need to delete their minor planets.

Regarding your question: it might have been better to wait for me to help you with this, as I would have explained these things in the process. When you said you had deleted all of them, I believed you, but wondered how you did it.

From the help under Cleanup/Delete: "Note that minor planets that are being used, such as being in an observing list or a log entry ,will not be deleted." So, if you could delete them, it would wreak havoc with everything, causing trouble with everything from log entries to observing lists. Please don't try things like deleting files, at least not without making a backup first.

If there is a reason to. you can delete more of them by deleting any minor planets from observing lists. You could delete the minor planet lists in the Auto Generated Lists folder. Some MPC download generate a list of the objects as a convenience. You could also delete the objects from the current minor planets list.

But I don't see any reason for you to do these things.

[PMSchu]

Hi Greg,

In Carlo's first post on this thread, he posted a video where he showed that his search for (2) Pallas returned the MP 2019 KN19 instead. Someting was wrong with the indexing of the MP names as you indicated in an earlier post here. I had that happen to me, as you know. It's a very rare problem, Carlo being only the second one to experience it. 

Carlo's MP database now contains 46 objects, which is the same number of MPs as in the Current Bright & Interesting MPs for April 2024 that Carlo downloaded. I suspect that that's where those MPs came from. The April 2024 Current MPs file doesn't include (376) Geometria, so it's no surprise that it's missing from his database. Is that correct?

Since Carlo's basically cleaned his MP database, would he now be able to download the full MPCORB file with these boxes checked:     

He'll then have orbital elements for ~1.3E^6 MPs. The MPC is using the epoch 2024 Mar 31 0000 UT the last time I checked, so they're very current.

Hope this helps,

Phil S.

[theskyhound]

Hello Phil,

You are making a lot of assumptions. You are not the only person that happened to, and there is more than one reason it could happen. Most reasons are relatively benign. Your problem went back to bugs in early versions, especially during beta testing. Those bugs have been fixed. I don't see any reason to believe this is the same problem. As far as I know, its fixed.

Yes, of course he could download those minor planets, assuming he wants all of them. But I don't understand how that's connected to the epoch of the elements. If you are thinking that is materially different from the Bright comet download, that isn't the case. Presumably any download would have the most current elements available from the MPC (which sometimes, on a case by case basis, aren't always current).