mpc-orb 0.2.0

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mpc-public/mpc_orb

N.B. The code in this repository is available as a pip-installable package:

pip install mpc_orb

Documentation and code related to the mpc_orb.json format.

• This is a standardized format for the exchange of data on the best-fit orbit for solar-system bodies, including minor-planets, comets, irregular satellites, and interstellar interlopers.
• The format uses JSON files for the exchange of data.

The MPC currently populates mpc_orb.json files using data from the orbfit package, but we emphasize that the mpc_orb.json format is intended for the generic exchange of orbit data from any source.

As of May 2023, the latest version of the defining schema is version 0.4

• While the schema versions are numbered < 1, the format should be considered experimental/developmental/beta/WIP.

This repository currently contains code and documentation related to:

• A description of the mpc_orb.json format, and an associated defining JSON schema.
• Examples of the mpc_orb.json format for some specific objects
• Python code to demonstrate the validation of files in the mpc_orb.json format.
• Python code to facilitate the parsing of files in the mpc_orb.json format.

Repo Contents

Sample JSON Files

Examples of the mpc_orb.json format for some specific objects can be found in /mpc_orb/demo_json

MPC_ORB JSON schema

The JSON files defining the mpc_orb.json format can be found in /mpc_orb/schema_json

Documentation

Documentation describing the mpc_orb.json format, including allowed fields, required fields, constraints, etc, can be found in the /docs/ directory.

Python Functionalities (/mpc_orb/)

The /mpc_orb/ directory contains some python code to both validate & parse mpc-orb-json files

Parsing mpc_orb.json formatted data

The code in mpc_orb/parse.py provides functions & classes to facilitate the parsing of mpc_orb.json files in python.

It is expected that this functionality will be used regularly by both internal MPC staff & external community users.

Some demonstrations of code usage can be found in the /demo/ directory and in the mpc_orb/demo.py script.

Validating mpc_orb.json files

The code in mpc_orb/parse.py provides functions & classes to validate mpc_orb.json files in python.

It is expected that these validation functionalities will typically be used as part of the "parse" functions described above.

I.e. it is not expected that the end-user will regularly access the validation functions directly, but rather, the validation functions will be called under-the-hood by the mpc_orb/parse.py routines.

Installation and Usage

The python code in mpc_orb is available as a pip-installable python package.

pip install mpc_orb

Python Tests (/tests/)

Tests of the python code in the mpc_orb directory are provided in the tests directory.

For details of the test code, including how to execute the tests, please see the file /tests/README.md.