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I recently[1] learned that you can telnet to a NASA machine to query various information about astronomical bodies, including man-made satellites. > telnet hor
by hoten 4y ago
I recently[1] learned that you can telnet to a NASA machine to query various information
about astronomical bodies, including man-made satellites.
> telnet horizons.jpl.nasa.gov 6775
The interface is pretty difficult to use, but there is a python wrapper for it. I forced myself
to stumble through the telnet interface.
> Voyager
(no semicolon–othewise it'd look up in the small-bodies table)
That tells you Voyager 1 is ID 31, and Voyager 2 is ID 32.
> 31
> E
> <Enter> x2 (take defaults)
> 2022-06-18
> 2022-06-19
> 1h
> <Enter>
> A
Spits out this data:
https://gist.github.com/connorjclark/de205ce62a7f1d4fda6d8fa74acb2958 https://gist.github.com/connorjclark/de205ce62a7f1d4fda6d8fa...
I'm not knowledgable enough to know how to utilize this data in an interesting way, but I assume this "Ephemeris" data can be utilized to determine where to point your telescope for any given object.
[1] https://twitter.com/cjamcl/status/1536609292572184576 https://twitter.com/cjamcl/status/1536609292572184576
- basementcat 4y agoYou can also point your browser to it.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- woliveirajr 4y agoPoint telescope x point browser: this one was funny :-)
- mct 4y agoVery interesting telnet site, thank you for sharing! FYI, though, I think this may be looking at the wrong object ID. It selected "31", which appears to be the entry for one of the Lagrange points. Voyager 1 and 2 appear to have negative ID numbers, "-31" and "-32".
- _petronius 4y agoHorizons is also available as a web interface (as another commenter mentioned), and if the orbital elements output (which is what you have there and is basically this data: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_elements https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_elements) is a bit opaque, you can also request it in Cartesian coordinates ("Vector table" under "Ephemeris type" in the web ui). Apparently it also has an email interface, which is neat. The web UI is here: https://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/horizons/app.html#/ https://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/horizons/app.html#/ I once did a hobby project doing 2-body orbital simulations, and was able to use this data to set up a model of the solar system, and satellites orbiting the Earth. It's quite a fun dataset!
- mturmon 4y agoThere’s a python package also, JPLephem — https://pypi.org/project/jplephem/ https://pypi.org/project/jplephem/ By default, it does solar system bodies … planets and our moon … but you can direct it to other SPK files (time-based ephemeris summaries) for asteroids, other moons, and spacecraft.