A Minor-Planet Follow-Up Page

If you select 8-line MPC format, you may display the residual block for the objects selected:

Show residuals blocks.

If you select 8-line MPC format the elements will be displayed with the ephemerides. If you select any format other than 8-line 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 latest published orbit. The opposition data lists the date of the next opposition and the declination and visual magnitude at that time.

Formats

The list of available formats for the orbital elements was correct at the time this document was prepared. It is possible that the Minor Planet Center now supports further formats. If you select the summary option, any newly supported formats will be listed.

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 for minor planets and comets are perturbed (if the orbits were computed with perturbations) and can be generated over the time period 1900 to 2040. Objects with unperturbed orbit solutions will return unperturbed ephemerides. 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 UTC.

If you desire a topocentric ephemeris, enter your observatory code in the appropriate box. When local circumstances are displayed, the azimuths are reckoned westwards from the south meridian.

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.