How to do?

The service can be used as a Web service and easily integrated into your own software (cf. Miriade.ephemph main page). We propose some examples of client programs for that. The service can also be used through a Web form which allows to define your input parameters, and to submit requests. This page describes how to do with some of the input parameters of the service.

The positional ephemerides are computed by Miriade.ephemcc, and the dynamical properties of solar system objects are the same.

The physical properties come from various sources, depending on the body. The primary source is the publications of the IAU Working Group on Cartographic Coordinates and Rotational Elements (Archinal et al. (2018), Celestial Mechanics and Dynamical Astronomy, 130, 22), which provides recommanded physical properties of planets, natural satellites, and a handful of asteroids and comets. The most complete source of physical properties of asteroids is the DAMIT database (Ďurech et al. (2010), DAMIT: a database of asteroid models, A&A, 513, A46), which stores models derived by many different researchers. Shape models and diameters of asteroids and comets are gathered from various database hosted by the NASA PDS Small Bodies Node.

• use the query forms made available on the IMCCE's Solar system portal.
• implement yourself the Miriade Web service ephemph method into your own software (see client templates) or call the HTTP request on the command line interface using non-interactive file transfert programs such as wget or curl (see the how to consume section).
• use the Miriade services through a VO-compliant software which implements them, such as Aladin and the Miriade plugin, or other VO applications. For example you can directly submit a request to Miriade.ephemph in the Location entry of the File → Load Table menu of Topcat software.

The general syntaxe of Sso names in Miriade is the following:

<prefix>:<name>

where <prefix> is one of the following codes:

• a to point out an asteroid
• c to point out a comet
• dp to point out a dwarf planet
• p to point out a planet
• s to point out a natural satellite

and where <name> is the official number or name, or the provisional designation of the Sso. The space character in the provisional designation of asteroids can be substituted by the underscore (_) or the HTML character %20.

If no prefix is used, the type of the Sso must be provided through the type argument. The list of known types is:

• Asteroid
• Comet
• Dwarf planet
• Planet
• Satellite

Example:

dp:ceres, a:3834, a:1992_SZ14, 
p:mars, s:501, 
c:1P, c:P/d'Arrest

Restriction: the names of asteroids and comets must be the official names adopted by IAU. If not, they could not be recognized. You can use the SsODNet service to seek for and to resolve solar system object names. For the natural satellites, only the ones for which an ephemeris is available are recognized.

Binary asteroids: If the name of an asteroid is suffixed by /X then the differential position of its satellite (if it exists) is also computed. X must be the name of the choosen component of the asteroidal system. Example: a:kalliope/Linus allows to compute the ephemerides of the asteroid (22) Kalliope and to display the differential coordinates of its satellite named Linus. The list of asteroidal systems for which ephemerides can be computed, as well as the list of orbital solutions available for a given asteroidal system, can be obtained through the Miriade.ephemsys method and its specific interface.

Example of file:

1,2,3
4,5,6

There are two ways to submit the file of targets:

1. HTTP request: use curl to POST the file when submitting the request. Prefix the file name with an @ sign to force the content part to be a file (c.f. curl manual), and use the key targets to introduce the file name. Example:

curl -F "targets=@<filename>" 
 "https://ssp.imcce.fr/webservices/miriade/api/ephemph.php?<args>"

where <filename> is the name of the local file which contains the targets. In that case, the parameter -name must be omitted in the arguments, and the -type parameter MUST be used to specify the type of solar system objects.

2. SOAP client: you have to store your file on a Web server, and to provide a valid URL into the name parameter of the ephemph method, so that the Miriade server can get the file content. Use the type parameter to specify the type of solar system objects. Example (php client):

// Input parameters
$param = array('name' => 'http://my.webserver/~joe/targets.dat',
               'type' => "aster",
               ... other args ... );

Restriction: A file must contain only one type of solar system objects: planets and natural satellites or asteroids and dwarf planets or comets. A file must contain not more than 5000 targets. The designation of targets must not be preceded by the prefixed code.

Examples (non exhaustive) of valid dates:

• now
• 2006-01-27T1:53:34
• 2453762.529467592
• 10 September 2000
• +1 day
• +1 week 2 days 4 hours 2 seconds
• next Thursday
• last Monday

The timescale of the epoch is provided by the argument tscale. The time span for which ephemeris can be computed depends on the chosen planetary theory (argument theory, see below).

Restriction: the seconds must be an integer number in the ISO format. For a time resolution better than a second, please use the julian period.

Tolerance: the character 'T' of the ISO 8601 format can be omitted.

Limits: the time span covered by Miriade's physical ephemerides covers the time period of INPOP planetary theory: 973-06-04 12h (2076601.0) to 3026-07-25 12h (2826489.0).

Example of file (one date per line):

2456246.535046296
2456247.835046296
2456248.135046296
now
2012-11-17T12:36:12.1
2012-11-17T12:46:42.123
2012-11-17T13:26:2.15

1. HTTP request: use curl to POST the file when submitting the request. Prefix the file name with an @ sign to force the content part to be a file, and use the key epochs to introduce the file name. In that case, the arguments -ep, -nbd and -step must be omitted. Example:

curl -F "epochs=@<filename>" 
 "https://ssp.imcce.fr/webservices/miriade/api/ephemph.php?<args>"

where <filename> is the name of the local file which contains the epochs.

2. SOAP client: you have to store your file on a Web server, and to provide a valid URL into the epoch parameter of the ephemph method, so that the Miriade server can get the file content. The nbd and step parameters can not be filled. Example (php client):

// Input parameters
 $param = array('name' => 'a:Ceres',
                'type' => "",
                'epoch' => "http://my.webserver/~joe/epochs.dat"
                'nbd' => "",
                'step' => "",
                ... other args ... );

Restriction: A file must contain not more than 1000 epochs.
Tip: Ascending sort order of epochs optimizes the ephemeris computation.

The list of available physical models can be retrieved by using the HTTP request specific interface of Miriade.ephemph service. Within the collected data, the id of the physical model is given by the value of the ssomodelid parameter.

For most objects, id = 1 will allow to compute ephemerides with the recommended physical model. For giant planets, id equal 1 to 3 corresponds to the classical systems I, II or III.

[+-]latitude, [+-]longitude, altitude

[+-]longitude [+-]latitude altitude

The longitude and latitude must be expressed in decimal degrees in the WGS84 reference system, and the altitude must be expressed in meters above the mean sea level. Longitudes are negative toward West. The sign + of the longitude and latitude can be omitted. If not, use the encoding %2B instead of the symbol + which is not correctly transmitted in the URL.

Example for Paris observatory (2°20′11.4874" E, 48°50′11.32" N, 67 m):

-observer=%2B48.836477778, 2.336524278, 67.0

For an extra-terrestrial observer, use one of the following codes recognized by Miriade:

@0 | 500@0

for an observer located at the barycenter of the Solar System

@sun | sun

for an observer located at the center of mass of the Sun

earth@L2 | 500@L2 | L2

for an observer located at the libration point L2 of the system Sun-(Earth+Moon)

venus@L2

for an observer located at the libration point L2 of the system Sun-Venus

mars@L2

for an observer located at the libration point L2 of the system Sun-Mars

jupiter@L2

for an observer located at the libration point L2 of the system Sun-Jupiter

saturn@L2

for an observer located at the libration point L2 of the system Sun-Saturn

mars | 500@mars

for an observer located at the centre of mass of Mars

spirit | @-254

for an observer located at the landing site of the Spirit rover, the first Nasa's Mars Exploration Rover. The areocentric coordinates of this site are λ=175.4729°E ; φ=14.5692°S in the IAU 2000 frame (Arvidson et al., Science vol. 305, 2004).

opportunity | @-253

for an observer located at the landing site of the Opportunity rover, the second Nasa's Mars Exploration Rover. The areocentric coordinates of this site are λ=354.47°E ; φ=1.95°S in the IAU 2000 frame (MER factsheet).

For an observer onboard a spacecraft, use one of the following codes recognized by Miriade. The periods of validity of the orbit (PVO) are expressed in UTC:

cassini | @-82

for an observer onboard the Cassini spacecraft.
PVO: 2001-03-07T12:00:00 to 2006-10-19T12:00:00

euclid | @-680

for an observer onboard the Euclid spacecraft.
PVO: 2023-07-01T15:00:00 to 2031-10-12T10:00:00

galileo | @-77

for an observer onboard Galileo spacecraft.
PVO: 1995-11-21T00:00:00 to 2002-11-26T08:00:00

hst | @-48

for an observer onboard the Hubble Space Telescope.
PVO: 1990-04-25T02:10:00 to 2024-03-14T03:30:00

iso

for an observer onboard the ISO satellite.
PVO: 1995-11-17T12:36:36 to 1999-01-01T13:52:00

iss | @-125544

for an observer onboard the International Space Station.
PVO: 2008-02-08T13:00:00 to 2009-01-26T13:00:00

juno | @-61

for an observer onboard Juno spacecraft.
PVO: 2011-08-05T17:30:00 to 2025-10-16T16:00:00

kepler | @-227

for an observer onboard the Kepler spacecraft.
PVO: 2009-03-07T06:30:00 to 2019-12-29T23:50:00

rosetta | @-226

for an observer onboard the Rosetta spacecraft.
PVO: 2004-03-02T09:30:00 to 2014-08-04T01:10:00

sirtf | sst | @-79

for an observer onboard the Sptizer Space Telescope.
PVO: 2003-08-25T06:30:00 to 2022-01-01T00:00:00

voyager1 | @-31

for an observer onboard the Voyager 1 spacecraft.
PVO: 1977-09-05T15:00:00 to 2031-01-01T00:00:00

voyager2 | @-32

for an observer onboard the Voyager 2 spacecraft.
PVO: 1977-08-20T16:00:00 to 2031-01-01T00:00:00

xmm-newton | @-10

for an observer onboard the XMM-NEWTON spacecraft.
PVO: 1999-12-10T03:00:00 to 2023-03-16T20:00:00

Sources of spacecraft kernels:

• Cassini: http://naif.jpl.nasa.gov/pub/naif/pds/data/co-s_j_e_v-spice-6-v1.0
• HST: ftp://naif.jpl.nasa.gov/pub/naif/HST/kernels/
• ISO: http://iso.esac.esa.int/manuals/HANDBOOK/gen_hb/
• ISS: NASA, provided by the BUSOC
• Juno: http://naif.jpl.nasa.gov/pub/naif/JUNO/kernels/
• Kepler: http://archive.stsci.edu/missions/k2/spice
• Rosetta: ftp://ssols01.esac.esa.int/pub/data/SPICE/ROSETTA/kernels/
• SIRTF: ftp://naif.jpl.nasa.gov/pub/naif/SIRTF/kernels/
• Voyager 1,2: ftp://naif.jpl.nasa.gov/pub/naif/VOYAGER

• λ: wavelength in micron in the range 4-20 µm (e.g. 10.0) or vector (size≤10) of wavelengths separated by comma and surrounded with square bracket (e.g. [5.0,10.0,20.0])
• p_v: visible geometric albedo (e.g. 0.26)
• η: beaming parameter, equal to one in the case that each point of the surface is in instantaneous thermal equilibrium with solar radiation (e.g. 1.0)
• ε: infrared emissivity (e.g. 0.9)

Biblio: Near-Earth Asteroid Thermal Model