Asteroid Ephemeris Document

The Asteroid Ephemeris document allows you to calculate instantaneous ephemeris information for your favorite asteroids. Specifically, for any asteroid, you can calculate the rise, set, and transit times, azimuth at rise and set times, and altitude at transit time for each day in the report period. For each time in the report period, you can calculate equatorial position, constellation, horizontal position (altitude & azimuth), solar elongation angle, phase angle, predicted magnitude, distance from earth, distance from sun, and atlas references. You can also calculate the total motion that an object travels between successive times in the report period. Times are accurate for the observer's location. Times, altitude and azimuth, and equatorial position values are given in the format selected in Preferences.

The Asteroid Ephemeris document is best to use when:

▪you know which asteroid(s) you want an ephemeris for

▪you want to know motion over time data for asteroid(s)

The Asteroid Search document is best to use when:

▪you don't know which asteroids match your search criteria

▪you want the best times to view asteroids

▪you want multiple levels of sorting

Information about the Asteroid Ephemeris Report

The document contains three adjustable panes.

▪The upper document settings pane allows you to specify how the ephemeris calculations are done.

▪The lower left report pane displays the results of the most recent calculations.

▪The lower right detail pane displays graphical and extended textual information for the selected object.

Document Settings Pane

General Tab

Location is used to select a particular location on the earth's surface. A location is required to calculate the ephemeral data in the report. The location used in a new document is that selected as the Favorite Location using the Location Manager. Note that when an existing document is opened, it retains the same location that was selected when the document was saved.

You may select any location by highlighting its name in the drop down list.

Apply Local Horizon Model If Any allows you to apply a local horizon model to the calculation of rise and set times of selected objects if the selected location has a horizon model defined in it. If a local horizon model is applied and the selected location has a local horizon model defined for it, rise & set times are the approximate times at which an object rises above and sets beneath the local horizon model. If a local horizon model is not applied, or if the selected location has no horizon model defined, rise and set times are calculated for a perfectly flat horizon.

The Asteroids list box contains the names of favorite asteroids. Select any number of them that you want to be included in the calculation (you can use the standard Windows shift-click and ctrl-click techniques to select multiple objects.) You may also use Select All to select all asteroids or Clear All to deselect all of them. Note that if you change favorite asteroids using the Orbital Elements Manager while an Asteroid Ephemeris document is open, the changes will appear in the open document.

Since there may be hundreds of asteroids in the list, you can use Find in List to locate asteroids quickly. Enter a partial name and press Find. The search looks for a partial match in each asteroid name so that if you search for 'vict' for example, the search would locate (12) Victoria. Since the finder looks for partial matches, you do not need to use wildcard characters. If a matching name is found, it is selected in the list box and the Find button changes to Next so that you can search further through the list. If no more matches are found, the status box beneath Find in List shows 'no more found'. If you want to start a new search, press Reset Finder.

Times Tab

You may enter dates and times directly into the Beginning Date & Time or Ending Date & Time boxes, or you may use any of the Date & Time Presets. The times that you enter are interpreted as either 12 hour or 24 hour format according to the setting specified in Preferences. The beginning date and time must precede or equal the ending date and time.

The calendars work for dates between January 1, 1753 and December 31, 9999 inclusively. This is a Windows limitation. If you enter a date outside of this range into the year/month/day boxes the associated calendar is disabled. You may use the calendars or the year/month/day boxes to specify dates within the range.

Date & Time Presets

These presets may be used to specify some commonly used beginning and ending dates and times, and the days to skip value. The default Preset is specified in Preferences | New Documents.

Time to Skip allows you set any frequency of time between calculations from Days to Weeks to Hours. You may enter the skip value directly into the Time to Skip box and choose a unit of time from the drop list.

Report Pane

Calculate initiates calculations and ultimately produces a report. The status of the calculation and creation of the report are shown while these tasks are being performed. You can terminate the calculation by pressing the Cancel button in the status box.

Clear allows you to erase the report text. Report text is automatically erased before a new report is created.

Fit Columns and Show Columns provide control over report content and layout. These functions are discussed in Working with Reports.

Help allows you to open online help to this page.

A recessed status box appears beside the Help button. It shows the number of objects and times per object reported for the most recent calculation if a calculation has been performed. If the calculation was terminated, 'Calculation canceled' appears in the status box. If the text in the status box is grayed then the settings in the document have been changed and the report has not been refreshed by Calculate.

Get DSS Images opens the DSS Download Status dialog box where you can use the Smart DSS Download™ feature. Please see DSS Download Status for details.

Clicking in the title bar of one of the columns sorts the data by that column; clicking again in the same column toggles the sort order between ascending and descending order. You can sort by multiple columns by using Shift-click - see Working with Reports for more information.

Asteroid Ephemeris Report contains the report text that results from the most recent calculation. Click here to see a description of the Asteroid Ephemeris report. The text in the report can be scrolled horizontally and vertically using cursor keys or by clicking the scroll bars.

The report window has a context menu that can be accessed by right-clicking in the window. The context menu contains:

▪name of the object

▪object-specific functions

▪Preferences

▪Report Style Browser

Detail Pane

The Detail Pane is a multi-tabbed pane that contains graphical or extended textual content for a selected object. Currently, these tabbed pages include:

What about?

Ephemeris accuracy is dependent on orbital elements. See Accuracy of asteroid ephemeris calculations and use the Orbital Elements Manager to update elements.

Motion values do not appear for the first instant per object in the report.

Atlas references may not appear in the report if they are disabled in Preferences.

You can calculate and report up to 65535 instants for each object.

Performance Note

Deep-Sky Planner can process thousands of asteroid ephemeris calculations but the performance will be very slow. If you need to improve performance, reduce the number of asteroids selected for calculation and/or reduce the number of favorite asteroids using the Orbital Elements Manager.

Additional Information:

▪Accuracy of asteroid ephemeris calculations

▪Saving a report to CSV

▪Saving a report to HTML

▪Saving a report to Text

▪Printing a document

▪Saving a document

▪Setting default values for a new asteroid ephemeris document

▪Asteroid Ephemeris document speed button can be placed on your tool bar so that you can create a asteroid ephemeris document instantly.

Help file version 9.2.3.0 ▪ Copyright © 2024-2026 Knightware, LLC

Help file version: 9.2.3.0 ▪ Copyright © 2026 Knightware, LLC