I'm looking for the near-Earth asteroid 2018 CB (which will zip by Earth tomorrow, 2/9), in SkySafari 5 Pro. No 2018 asteroids are showing up in the search.
There's another thread, "Additional Solar System objects", asking for 2018 BC and 2018 CC. Bill Tschumy says that 2018 BC is already in the database, but even that one isn't showing up in my list. I've just done the "Update Minor Body Orbit Data" (twice). What am I missing?
It doesn't exactly surprise me that the 2018 asteroids are not showing up in SS5. The files we pull from the Minor Planet Center do take a while to get updated. In SS6, we have changed how we obtain data from the MPC and it is much more up to date. We do have 2018 BC in the current search results.
I also have SS6 for iOS. I just updated minor bodies and tried it, I can now find 2018 BC, but it doesn't have 2018 CB. Is there a way to for me to manually input an asteroid's orbital elements?
Sorry, there is no way for you to enter the elements yourself.
OK. In that case, could you add this object to the database? With tomorrow's flyby, I'm guessing people will be interested. I am!
I'm sorry, but we can't do that. We do occasionally manually add items. However, it would probably take me a couple of hours to add it and verify it is working properly. For NEOs that will be significantly perturbed by Earth/Moon gravity, we actually have an orbit integrator that tries to solve the n-body equations to predict the path. I would prefer not to just throw this out without verifying it.
I recommend generating an ephemeris for your location from the MPC (or JPL) and just using the predicted coordinates to try and view this. In SS5 it is easy to make a scope GoTo specific coordinates. Just tap and hold on the GoTo button and a panel will popup where you can enter a specific RA/Dec.
I will also say that since this was just discovered 4 days ago, there will be considerable uncertainty as to its path.
Thanks for your help.
