If some of your new targets of interest are not classified as unusual minor planets or observable comets by the Minor Planet Center, script UpdateEph will not automatically add them to the database when you perform an automated ephemeris update. To do this, you should follow these steps:

• Prepare a text file listing the designations of the minor planets and/or comets you wish to add to the database. One example file would be

  (13421) 2003 SR128 2002 CH43 2000 TV51

  Let us suppose that this file is saved to the TAO\targets directory as myObjects.txt.

• Make sure script UpdateEph is customized to suit your needs. The customization of this script was described in detail in a previous section.

• Open a DOS window (Command Prompt), cd to the TAO\targets directory, and type the command

  C:TAO\targets\>cscript UpdateEph.vbe myObjects.txt

  Note: If you have performed an automated ephemeris update, you should already have a suitable DOS window on your desktop, so it is not necessary to open a new window.

Adding moving targets without published ephemerides

Newly discovered moving objects often do not have published ephemeris. If a few astrometric positions are available for one or more newly discovered objects, you may use script NOEG to automatically download ephemerides from the New Object Ephemeris Generator and add the objects to TAO's moving object database.

Before you run NOEG for the first time, make sure you have customized the configuration file TAO\targets\UpdateEph.cfg to suit your needs. This process is described in another section. TAO\targets\UpdateEph.cfg is the configuration file for both UpdateEph and NOEG, so if you have already customized UpdateEph, then NOEG is also ready for use.

Open a DOS window (Command Prompt) and cd to the TAO\targets directory. To review the command line options for script NOEG, type the command

C:TAO\targets\>cscript NOEG.vbe ?

This will print the following help information:

Microsoft (R) Windows Script Host Version 5.6 Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation 1996-2001. All rights reserved. Usage: cscript NOEG.vbe file Argument: file A text file containing astrometric observations of minor planets for which one wishes to generate Vaisala ephemeris using the New Object Ephemeris Generator. If the file argument is omitted or is a question mark (?), this help information will be printed.

The astrometric observations of your newly discovered objects (in MPC format) should be saved to a text file in directory TAO\targets. An example file would be

     H3T301   C2003 10 03.15773 00 16 08.26 -45 04 12.7                      860
     H3T301   C2003 10 03.16492 00 16 07.24 -45 04 06.1          18.5 R      860
     H3T301   C2003 10 03.17078 00 16 06.13 -45 03 52.4          18.2 R      860
     H3T302   C2003 10 03.16737 00 31 28.26 -23 34 57.7          16.7 R      860
     H3T302   C2003 10 03.17323 00 31 27.68 -23 34 47.9          16.6 R      860
     H3T302   C2003 10 03.17728 00 31 27.21 -23 34 42.0          17.0 R      860
     H3T303   C2003 10 03.18787 00 14 10.61 -44 54 46.0                      860
     H3T303   C2003 10 03.20601 00 14 09.23 -44 54 46.6          18.1 R      860
     H3T303   C2003 10 03.21985 00 14 08.33 -44 54 46.1          17.7 R      860

Let us suppose this file is saved to the TAO\targets as myObs.txt. To download ephemeris and add these objects to the moving object database, you would type the command

C:TAO\targets\>cscript NOEG.vbe myObs.txt

After the script executes you will see a screen message like this:

Logs written to: myObs_NOEG.log Split_myObs_NOEG_FileList.log

These log files will contain a detailed record of the ephemeris download process, including error messages. Both log files will be found in directory TAO\targets. You will notice that after the script runs there will be some new files with extension .vsl in the TAO\targets. These plain text files contain ephemerides for individual objects.

Notes:

• If you have performed an automated ephemeris update or added moving targets with published ephemerides to the database, you should already have a suitable DOS window on your desktop, so it is not necessary to open a new window.

• The New Object Ephemeris Generator is only suitable to generate ephemerides for slow-moving objects (motion rates smaller than about 0.7 deg/day); faster-moving objects should be reported to the MPC immediately, for possible inclusion in the NEO Confirmation Page.