2023 FEBRUARY 01

In this month’s issue:

1. The first newsletter

2. General information on the new MPC

3. How to contact us.

1. The New MPC

The Minor Planet Center (MPC) is the single worldwide location for receipt and distribution of positional measurements of minor planets, comets and outer irregular natural satellites of the major planets. The MPC is responsible for the identification, designation and orbit computation for all of these objects. This involves maintaining the master files of observations and orbits, keeping track of the discoverer of each object, and announcing discoveries to the rest of the world via electronic circulars and an extensive website. The MPC operates at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, under the auspices of Division F of the International Astronomical Union (IAU).

Recently, the MPC has significantly increased the number of members of its staff. The complete list of all the currently active staff members is available at this link https://minorplanetcenter.net/about.

Why a Newsletter?

The idea of a monthly Newsletter comes with the goal of communicating to the users our recent developments, to solicit feedback from the community, and make our processes as transparent as possible. The Newsletter will be distributed to the Minor Planet Mailing List, to the MPC-ml Mailing List and a copy will be available on our website.

Additional Communications

This Newsletter will not cover all of our communications, especially the most urgent ones, e.g. problems that could affect the majority of users, new services, etc. In those cases, we will update the Status webpage and/or send an email to the MPC-ml mailing list. If you would like to subscribe to the MPC mailing list, please follow the instructions on the Helpdesk page.

How can you contact us?

As many of you now know, the best way to contact the MPC is through the use of the Jira Helpdesk. Please, look at the tips we have prepared on how to use Jira and at the frequently asked questions before submitting a new ticket. All the staff members have access to Jira. Please do not email us if not strictly necessary. We always encourage all users to report bugs or to request new features through Jira. The more you talk to us, the better we know how we are doing.

What's New?

Major highlights from the past months and some new developments that are going to be available very soon, at least in their beta version.

Ephemeris Service, MPChecker and NEA Planning Aid

Some of our most used services have performed poorly for a while, and many users have stopped using them. The Ephemeris Service, MPChecker and the NEA Planning Aid have been restored and improved. We are still in the process of fixing small issues, but we would encourage you to start using them again and to report any problems. We are also working on the next generation of these services. News will come soon!

New numbering system

Users who process numbered observations should be advised that the minor planet number (620000) is being assigned this month during the MPC preparation, and will have the packed designation "~0000". This introduces the extension to the packed numbering format (see MPEC 2019-O55 for further information). We have chosen to only assign this one number to simplify tests of our system and minimize problems for users. Starting from the preparation of the next Minor Planet Circular, the numbering process will go back to normal.

NEO Confirmation Page & NEO Recovery Page

A year ago, the MPC introduced a Recovery Page that publishes single night recoveries, gathers subsequent follow-ups and automatically issues recovery MPECs once per day. Candidates that are on the NEOCP will be moved to the Recovery Page if the MPC or an external submitter identifies an NEOCP candidate with a known NEO that would extend the arc from one to multi-apparition orbit if there is only one tracklet (or a very short arc of < 0.5 day or <0.75 day from less than 3 stations). If the NEOCP candidate has a longer arc, then a recovery MPEC will be issued directly. Details of the criteria under which recovery MPECs are subsequently issued can be found on the Recovery Page.