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Following an announcement in
July 2018 the Minor Planet Center adopted
ADES (Astrometry Data Exchange Standard) as the preferred format for
observers to supply astrometric information to them, superseding the older 80-column
MPC1992 format, though both formats are currently accepted by the
MPC.
The ADES standard includes two formats, XML and PSV (Pipe-Separated
Values) and Astrometrica (version 4.12 onwards) generates PSV formatted
files only.
Although ADES holds much more information than the older format it is
not as convenient to use for humans, e.g. column headings are
required in the PSV version, but those can vary from submission to
submission, so combining astrometry from different sources and sorting into
chronological order is much easier with the MPC1992 format.
The ADES Astrometry Parser was written to allow ADES PSV formatted
files generated directly from Astrometrica to be converted back to
MPC1992 format if needed but also to allow safe editing of the ADES files and
to provide automatic submission to the MPC, making ADES files just as
easy to use as emailing MPC1992 files has been in the past.
The Astrometry Parser loads ADES data directly from Astrometrica and
optionally displays just those lines that have not yet been submitted to
the MPC.
The ADES lines can be edited, including insertion of comment lines and
the removal of all photometry fields from a line if required.
A "Parse and Convert" toolbar button converts the ADES data into MPC1992
format which is displayed in the bottom half of the screen.
Each submission is saved to disk in ADES PSV format and also in 80-column
MPC1992 format before transmission of the ADES file to the MPC using
cURL. The selected type of object being reported (e.g. NEOCP, NEO etc.) is
used to submit the correct object type to the MPC.
The user has the choice of submitting to the live MPC server, or just
validating without submitting, using the MPC's "Validating ADES-2017 PSV
Formatted Observations" function.
A record of each submission is kept in a text log, containing the
Submission ID returned from the MPC or details of failure.
For ADES batches containing already designated NEOs, Astrometry Parser
can submit Reported status to NEOfixer.
See the
User
Guide for further functionality and more detailed information. Download the software
here
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