Check your MPC report

Introduction

This software can be used to check your position report to MPC in an 80-column punch card format.

At the moment, there is no support for the ADES format.

The intention is not to manipulate the data but to remeasure the data or don't send stupid data to the MPC.

Explanation

The program is freeware at the moment. I take no guarantee for anything. You use it at your own risk. It's a Windows command line program.

You start the program by typing

   check filename
   

The output for all positions is written as an HTML file in checklist.html. You can view the file by typing

   start checklist.html
   

If you want only to see the errors (useful, if you have many observations), do the same with errorlist.html.

I propose you to write a batch with starting check and then start the HTML file in your browser.

Addition for find_orbit users

If you use find_orbit, you can copy the files fo32.exe and totaljson.exe (both included in the ZIP archive) into the folder of find_orbit and use one of the following syntax (32 or 64-bit system):

   check.exe fo=path\find_o32.exe filename
   check.exe fo=path\find_o64.exe filename
   

path is the path to the find_orbit directory (fo32.exe must be in this directory!), e.g. e:\mpc. It's not a so good idea to copy check.exe also into the find_orbit directory because with this syntax check downloads for each object the complete observations from MPC into one file for this object and the find_orbit folder will be soon very full.

Now the program check.exe checks for each object the residuals in the orbit using find_orbits fo32.exe and analyzing them with totaljson.exe. If the maximum residual is greater than 1.0 arcsec (or fo32.exe ends with a crash), the Windows version of find_orbit starts with the latest years and observations of this object to check the residuals. Sometimes there is only one observation off or many other observations are not used (toggled off) due to long time distribution. Then you must toggle those observations on and mostly the residuals are OK. I propose you not erase a single observation, but remeasure them.

You find a complete list of generated files in the Examples section.

Download

You can download just the ZIP archive (at first download) with the accompanying wget.exe, DLL file and totaljson.exe. You should save it anywhere on your disc. You must know the directory to start it or save it in a PATH directory of your Windows system.

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