If you want to observe one of the discoveries of the Starkenburg-Sternwarte Heppenheim, this page will help you to find important follow-up informations.
Other observers also have their own follow-up pages, check out this list of links.
A PDF document describing the use of the MPES is available.
Information on any known problems with this service is available.
By default, ephemerides are geocentric, begin now and are for 20 days at 1 day intervals.
Start date for ephemerides: Number of dates to output
Ephemeris interval: Ephemeris units: days hours minutes seconds
For daily ephemerides, enter desired offset from 0h UT: hours
Display positions in: truncated sexagesimal or full sexagesimal or decimal units
Display motions as: "/sec "/min "/hr °/day
Total motion and direction Separate R.A. and Decl. sky motions Separate R.A. and Decl. coordinate motions
Suppress output if sun above local horizon
Suppress output if object below local horizon
Generate perturbed ephemerides for unperturbed orbits
Also display elements for epoch
Format for elements output:
none | MPC 1-line | MPC 8-line |
SkyMap (SkyMap Software) | Guide (Project Pluto) | xephem (E. Downey) |
Home Planet (J. Walker) | MyStars! (Relative Data Products) | TheSky (Software Bisque) |
Starry Night (Sienna Software) | Deep Space (D. S. Chandler) | PC-TCS (D. Harvey) |
Earth Centered Universe (Nova Astronomics) | Dance of the Planets (ARC) | MegaStar V4.x (E.L.B. Software) |
SkyChart 2000.0 (Southern Stars Software) | Voyager II (Carina Software) | SkyTools (CapellaSoft) |
Autostar (Meade Instruments) |
If you select 8-line MPC format, you may display the residual block for the objects selected:
Show residuals blocks. Show only residual lines containing observations from code . 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.
Ephemerides can be supplied for objects with only Väisälä elements, but the elements themselves are not supplied.
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.
This service utilises the Minor Planet Ephemeris Service, courtesy of the IAU's Minor Planet Center. It has been made possible by Process Software Corporation, and their excellent VMS Web server, Purveyor.
The calculations will be performed on the Tamkin Foundation Computing Network.