From: Mark Gaffney <markgaffney@me.com>

Date: September 25, 2009 11:31:19 PM MDT

To: Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com

Subject: Re: [Astro_IIDC] Online Asteroid Resources


Hi Milton, 

I`ve been looking at them & both Sky Tools 3 Pro & The Sky X SAE for Mac have the facility to import asteroid databases. Sky Tools will display the optimum ones for your observing position for the night (& you can generate current lists) then you can find the object on the Interactive Atlas & presumably slew to them. Such objects as Io, Metis & Lutetia (ones I`ve recorded on my sheet of paper here) are on your list & are amongst the 11 objects displayed on my ST list. I`ve only briefly looked at it but the magnitude, constellation & rise transit & set times are there also. None of the objects on the list are described as being visually detectable in with my C9.25. I guess that`s a matter for using a time exposure of some kind...Does your Starry Night app. have something along these lines? 


Mark.

On 26/09/2009, at 2:19 PM, milton_aupperle wrote:

Hi Folks;

Over the past week or so, I've located a number of useful online information sources for Asteroid information.

One of the best I've found for doing preliminary selection of asteroids to image is:

http://spiff.rit.edu/richmond/parallax/phot/LCSUMPUB.TXT

It's a bit dated, but it gives the Asteroid number, the name, the Class, the rotational period in hours (Per.) and the change in magnitude due to rotation (Ampl.).

The number is useful for searching the "Asteroid Database Index"

http://epmac.lpl.arizona.edu/

which has spectral curves, light curves and all sorts of information on each asteroid.

To get the current location and estimated magnitudes, I use the JPL Small-Body Database Browser :

http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi

Once there, you click on the [Ephemeris] link which takes you to the "HORIZONS Web-Interface" site. Once your there, click on the "Generate Ephemeris" button and that generates a list of the objects RA / Dec position and estimated magnitude.

Hope that helps..

Milton Aupperle