- What is AstDyS?
- How does AstDyS work?
- Future expansion of AstDyS
- Credits
What is AstDyS?
Fundamentally,
AstDyS provides information on numbered asteroids with a convenient
Web-based interface. It is based on a continually and almost
automatically maintained database of asteroid orbits. This site
provides a number of useful services to the asteroid observers and
scientists interested in studying them.
- For each asteroid in our database, the results of its orbit
determination are available for inspection and comparison with other
sources. Everything needed by the user to verify the computations is
available online, including our software.
- Asteroid mean and proper elements (analytic and synthetic) are
also available together with the software used to compute them.
- Our observation prediction service provides ephemeris predictions
and finder charts with information on the linear or semi-linear
confidence region as appropriate.
- Files with the data for downloading are available in different suitable
formats.
- A powerful search engine provides direct acces to every required
information in the basic and auxiliary data files.
- On-line Info and Help facilities, README files provided with
straightforwardly accessible FTP pages, links to the papers explaining
the theoretical background of our procedures and to the related sites,
as well as numerous comments embedded into the software are all there
to make AstDys as useful and easy-to-use as possible.
How does AstDyS work?
AstDyS is based on a
Postgresql
database running on a
Linux system.
The database of orbits is continually and almost automatically maintained
with the most recent
Minor Planet Center
observations. The orbits are computed with the
OrbFit
software package provided by the
OrbFit Consortium.
All of the computational services provided by this site can
also be done with this software package.
Future expansion of AstDyS
AstDyS is continuously expanding and improving. Here are a few of the
things on our long range "To Do" list.
- Providing automatic links to databases of physical
observations (photometry, spectrometry, radar, spacecraft).
- Family membership
How to get help?
Every page has a context sensitive "help" link at the top and bottom
of the page. This is the place to look for an explanation of the data
and terminology you see on a particular page.
We also provide answers to Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ).
If you still have questions, comments, complaints, or suggestions
after reviewing this information please use the
contact interface. We are always working to make this site more
informative.
Credits
-
AstDyS is currently operated by a consortium with the following
participing institutions:
-
Department
of Mathematics
, University of
Pisa, Italy:in particular the Celestial Mechanics
Group. - Andrea
Milani Comparetti is one of the founders of
AstDyS, Giovanni
F. Gronchi, and
Giacomo
Tommei are active members.
-
IASF-INAF
Rome, Italy:
- Giovanni B. Valsecchi is one of the founders
of AstDyS.
-
SpaceDyS
srl, Cascina,
Italy:
- Fabrizio Bernardi, Alessia Bertolucci and Lisa Bedini
are active members of AstDyS on behalf of their company.
-
There are other institutions with which either we have a collaboration
which is important for the quality of the AstDyS service, or have
greatly contributed in the past to the development and operations of
the system:
- Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena (CA), USA
- Steve Chesley
is one of the founders of AstDyS. The AstDyS automatic information system was
developed by Steve while at the University of Pisa on a NATO-sponsored
postdoctoral fellowship, under the supervision of Andrea. He wrote
most of the Perl code that transfers the output of the Fortran
programs into the database. Steve left the University of Pisa at the
end of 1999 to work at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. In his present position of
responsible for the NASA SENTRY system he is still an
essential collaborator, because of the requirement for
technical verification of the most serious risk cases.
- Astronomical Observatory of Belgrade, Serbia
- Zoran Knezevic is the Director of the Astronomical Observatory of Belgrade.
He is in charge of the computation of the proper elements of the asteroids, both analytic and synthetic.
- Department of Astronomy at the Faculty of Mathematics,
University of Belgrade, Serbia
- Bojan Novakovic
has developed the interface with the GRID distributed computing system for AstDyS.
- Department of Applied Mathematics,
University of Valladolid, Spain:
-
María Eugenia Sansaturio and Oscar Arratia have contributed important software segments and have also
operated the system for a long time.
-
We would like also to acknowledge the following contributions:
- Hyperborea
srl, Cascina, Italy:
- Nicola Ronci and Raffaele
Guerriero have been major contributors in the development of
the original database and web interface for AstDyS. The
interface has now been replaced with one based upon the free
software PHP, but the basic ideas are the same.
-
OrbFit Consortium
- The members of this group of researchers have developed the
OrbFit
software system. OrbFit does many things, the most important ones
being orbit propagation, orbit determination, observation prediction,
close approach analysis, and orbit identification. All of the orbital
computations done by AstDyS, including the ones for impact monitoring,
are based on library routines from this package.