How to do?

The service can be used as a Web service and easily integrated into your own software (cf. Miriade.ephemcc 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 ephemerides of planets are, by default, computed with the IMCCE's INPOP 4-D planetary theory. The ephemerides of the natural satellites are computed from various peculiar planetary solutions. The ephemerides of the asteroids and comets are computed by numerical integration of the n bodies perturbated problem (post-newtonian approximation). The dynamical properties of the asteroids are taken from the ASTORB database of the Lowell Observatory or the MPCORB database of the Minor Planet Center. The dynamical properties of the comets are taken from the COMETPRO database of the IMCCE.

The dynamical properties of asteroids and comets are updated weekly (early Monday morning). The dynamical properties of the planets and their natural satellites are updated as soon as a new solution has been made publicly available.

• use the query forms made available on the IMCCE's Solar system portal.
• implement yourself the Miriade Web service vision 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).

The choice of a (extra)galactic object must be done by an identifier recognized by the Simbad astronomical database, maintained by the Strasbourg astronomical Data Center.

The general syntaxe of celestial object names in Miriade.ViSiON is the following:

where <prefix> is one of the following codes:

• a to point out an asteroid
• c to point out a comet
• dp to point a dwarf planet
• e to point out any fixed point on the celestial sphere
• p to point out a planet or a natural satellite
• u to point out a Simbad object

where <name> is the official number or name or the provisional designation of a Sso, or an identifier recognized by Simbad astronomical database for non Sso, or the equatorial coordinates of any fixed point on the celestial sphere.

where <alias> is the name that will be associated to the object in tables and figures of ViSiON (e.g. u:TYC_5595009821=PSF1).

Restrictions:

• the names of asteroids and comets must be the ones adopted in ASTORB and COMETPRO databases. For the natural satellites, only the ones for which an ephemeris is available are recognized.
• the names of celestial objects outside the solar system must comply with the Dictionary of Nomenclature of celestial objects of Simbad. The syntaxe of the names must follow the following rule:

  <catalogue>_<identifier> | <proper_name>

  where catalogue is the acronym of the catalogue (e.g., HIP, TYC, ...), where identifier is the identifier of the object (usually a number), and where proper_name is the usual name of the object (e.g. Polaris, Sirius). If the number is composed of a sequence of numbers (e.g. FFFF-NNNNN-N) then the leading zero must be discarded, e.g. TYC 5595-00982-1 is written TYC_55959821.

  Examples:

  M_31, HIP_11767, Polaris, TYC_55959821

• the fixed points on the celestial sphere are defined by their equatorial coordinates (RA,DEC), and must comply the format: <RA>±<DEC> with RA and DEC expressed in hours and degrees, formated in decimal or sexagesimal number (with the character underscore (_) as field separator). It is recommended to encode the plus sign (+) of DEC by its term percent-encoding %2B.

  Examples:

  e:0_10_30%2B45_2_12.4, e:0.175-45.03678

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 UTC. The period of time for which ephemeris can be computed is 1951-01-01 12h (2433647.0) to 2024-12-31 12h (2460676.0).

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.

[+-]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

The former arguments longitude and latitude are still usable, but they are deprecated, and we encourage you to update your code.

The criteria of visibility can be tuned by defining values or range of values for multiple parameters specifying the required conditions of for observation. The criteria are provided through the cuts parameter of the Web service, or by using the "Advanced parameters" item of the ViSiON query form. In both cases, they are defined by a coma separated list of tags written as an IDL structure: <tag1>:<value1>, ..., <tagN>:<valueN>

The list of accepted tags is:

el:{min:<minval>,max:<maxval>}

Minimum and maximum elevation of the target, in degrees

mag:{min:<minval>,max:<maxval>}

Minimum and maximum apparent V magnitude of the target

phase:{min:<minval>,max:<maxval>}

Minimum and maximum solar phase angle, in degrees, for solar system objects only

elong:{sun:<val>,moon:<val>}

Minimum solar and lunar elongation, in degrees

diam:{min:<minval>,max:<maxval>,unit:<val>}

Minimum and maximum apparent diameter of the target, in the specified unit (sec, min, deg)

duration:<val>

Minimum time span during which all conditions are met, in minutes

event:'<val>'

Event defining the beginning and the end of the night, either sunrise/sunset: <val>=sun, or the civil, nautical, or astronomical twilights: <val>=civil|nautic|astro

Examples:

• Set minimum elevation to 40°: el:{min:40.0}
• Set elevation between 60° and 80°: el:{min:60.0,max:80.0}
• Set maximum phase angle to 20°: phase:{max:20.0}
• Set minimum time span during which conditions are met to 1h: duration:60.0
• Set night begin/end to astronomical twilight: event:'astro'

• 30° ≤ Elevation ≤ 90 °
• -30 ≤ Magnitude ≤ 90
• 0° ≤ Phase ≤ 180°
• Sun elongation = 30°
• Moon elongation = 5°
• 0.0 ≤ Diameter ≤ 9999.0 arcsec
• Duration = 10 minutes
• Night limits = 'civil'

mv

Sort by apparent magnitude

diam

Sort by apparent diameter

RA

Sort by right ascencion [default]

Dec

Sort by declination

rate

Sort on non-sidereal rate

alt

Sort by the maximum altitude reached

az

Sort by the azimuth at maximum altitude

gLon

Sort by galatic longitude

gLat

Sort by galatic latitude

dObs

Sort by the range to observer

dSun

Sort by heliocentric distance

phase

Sort by phase angle

sunE

Sort by solar elongation

moonE

Sort by lunar elongation

type

Sort by target type (asteroid, planet, star...)

When sorting by target type, a second sorting parameter can be set, among the list above, with the following syntax: type>parameter, e.g.: type>dObs to sort according to target type, then according to the range to observer.