Selden's List of Minor Planet Orbits for Celestia

3.2: Minor Planet Orbits.

3.2.1: Visited by spacecraft.
3.2.2: NEOs.

3.2.2.1: Past Close Calls.
3.2.2.2: Future Close Calls.

3.2.3: Trojans.
3.2.4: Others.

• Conversion of [minor planets'] Absolute Magnitude to Diameter
• How to transform orbital elements into Celestia's SSC format
• Selden's List of Resources for Celestia

The ZIP archives below contain orbital elements for various minor planets and other interesting bodies. Their .SSC files are in a folder named "extras". If you restore the archives in your Celestia directory, they should automatically be put into your extras subdirectory.

The .SSC files themselves have Unix-style bare line-feeds as the record delimiters. The Windows versions of Celestia, Emacs and Wordpad read and display the files just fine, but they aren't so readable if you use Notepad. Sorry.

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3.2.1: Visited by spacecraft.

• Asteroid (5535) Annefrank:
  A destination of NASA's Stardust mission. See spacecraft.html.
  • annefrank.ssc (1.5KB, 7Nov2002)
  • annefrank-xyz.ssc
  • annefrank.xyz
• Asteroid (2685) Masursky
  Observed by Cassini. Also see spacecraft.html.
  • 2685.ssc (1.5K, 16-Oct-02)
    The asteroid has been set to be of Class "moon" to simplify comparisons of its orbit and Cassini's.
  • See also:
    • NASA Press Release
    • LPL's CICLOPS (Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for OPerations) description of the encounter.
• Asteroid (4979) Otawara: otawara.ssc
  Originally one of several destinations of ESA's Rosetta mission. See spacecraft.html.
• Asteroid (140) Siwa: siwa.ssc
  Originally one of several destinations of ESA's Rosetta mission. See spacecraft.html.

• near.zip (1.5KB) Eros and Mathilde: NEAR destinations (specified as moons) (29 Sep 2002: fixed typo in name of Mathilde)
  See also: hutchison/index.html#4 for improved orbital elements and models of Eros by Grant Hutchison for the time of the first NEAR encounter.

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Note:
The asteroid orbital elements used in the sections below were obtained from Horizons and from the IAU's Minor Planet Center at http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/mpc.html
on their pages
http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/lists/Closest.html
http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/lists/MarsTrojans.html
http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/lists/JupiterTrojans.html
http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/lists/Centaurs.html
http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/lists/Others.html
and
http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/lists/TNOs.html

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3.2.2: NEOs: Close calls from several Near Earth Objects.

3.2.2.1: Past Close Calls.

• neo11.zip (15KB) (28Mar2003)
  This .ZIP archive contains the 11 "Flyby" .SSC files listed below of the NEOs that have come very close in the past or are sure to in the future.

  These Celestia .SSC files contain elliptical orbital elements obtained from Horizons for the 7 asteroids known to have passed closer to the Earth than the orbit of the Moon prior to 2003. (More than 20 have been seen since then.) See http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/lists/Closest.html.

  The orbits of Near Earth Objects invariably are changed by their passage through the Earth's gravitational field. These Keplerian orbital elements provide precise descriptions only of the flybys themselves.

  The orbital elements of most NEOs are determined from observations made at the times of their closest approaches. As a result, the predicted "unperturbed" pre- and post-flyby orbits may not be as accurate as we'd like. Nevertheless, comparing them can be enlightening. The Pre/Post elements below were calculated by Horizons for dates about 6 months before and after the close encounters.

  Provisional Designation NeoDys URL	Flyby Orbit	Pre/Post-Flyby Orbits	Date of Closest Approach	Distance
  1994 XM1	1994_xm1.ssc	1994_xm1-2.ssc	1994 Dec 9.8	0.0007AU = 105,000km
  	1994 XM1 comes visiting... Cel:// URL for this viewpoint Cel:// URL for this viewpoint
  2002 XV90	2002_xv90.ssc		2002 Dec 11.35	0.00079AU = 118,000km
  2002 MN	2002_mn.ssc		2002 June 14.09	0.00080AU = 120,000km
  1993 KA2	1993_ka2.ssc	1993_ka2-2.ssc	1993 May 20.9	0.0010AU = 150,000km
  1994 ES1	1994_es1.ssc		1994 Mar. 15.7	0.0011AU = 165,000km
  1991 BA	1991_ba.ssc		1991 Jan. 18.7	0.0011AU = 165,000km
  2001 BA16	2001_ba16.ssc	2001_ba16-2.ssc	2001 Jan. 15.85	0.00205AU = 307,000km

  
  Notes:
  
  • It is the nature of these asteroids that they will be paying us more visits in the future. (If at first you don't succeed...)
  • The .SSC files include InfoURLs linking to their NeoDys Web pages. The NeoDys site's pages tend to have more details than the pages on NASA's NEO Web site at http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/.

  3.2.2.2: Future Close Calls.

  Provisional Designation NeoDys URL	Flyby Orbit	Pre/Post-Flyby Orbits	Date of Closest Approach	Distance
  1999 AN10	1999_AN10.ssc		2027 Aug. 7.2988	0.002612AU = 390,000 km
  2001 WN5	2001_wn5.ssc		2028 Jun. 26.20639	0.001730AU = 259,000 km
  2000 WO107	2000_wo107.ssc		2140 Dec. 1.84059	0.002118AU = 317,000km
  1998 OX4	1998_ox4.ssc		2148 Jan 22.14140	0.001980AU = 296,000km

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3.2.3: Trojans.

The orbital elements for the Martian Trojans were obtained from
http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/lists/MarsTrojans.html
• MartianTrojans.ssc (all 6 of them in 5KB) (18 Sep 2002)
• mtm.ssc (5KB) specified as moons so orbits will show (18 Sep 2002)

  The orbital elements for the Jovian Trojans were obtained from
  http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/lists/JupiterTrojans.html

• j2c.zip (2.5KB) test file of 17 Jovian Trojans (17 Sep 2002)

• jt.zip (128KB) orbital elements of Jovian Trojans (19 Sep 2002)
  jt.zip includes 4 files:
  extras/jt4n.ssc -- 407 named L4 Jovian Trojans
  extras/jt4p.ssc -- 547 unnamed L4 Jovian Trojans
  extras/jt5n.ssc -- 216 named L5 Jovian Trojans
  extras/jt5p.ssc -- 367 unnamed L5 Jovian Trojans
  The Keplerian orbital elements in these files are as measured. As a result, the asteroids will wander away from the Lagrange points since Celestia does not implement any gravity.

• jt2.zip (128KB) orbital elements of Jovian Trojans (19 Sep 2002)
  jt2.zip includes 4 files:
  extras/jt4n2.ssc -- 407 named L4 Jovian Trojans
  extras/jt4p2.ssc -- 547 unnamed L4 Jovian Trojans
  extras/jt5n2.ssc -- 216 named L5 Jovian Trojans
  extras/jt5p2.ssc -- 367 unnamed L5 Jovian Trojans
  The Keplerian orbital elements in these files have been modified: their orbital periods and SemiMajorAxis values have been set to be the same as Jupiter's. As a result, the asteroids will not wander away from the Lagrange points, but will stay synchronized with Jupiter.

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3.2.4: Others.

Orbit Catalogs	Comments
dangerous_22mar09.zip (87KB)	1040 asteroids which fly near the Earth
centaurs.zip (18KB, updated 26Aug06)	178 Centaur asteroids have their perihelions between Saturn and Neptune
others.zip (20KB, updated 26Aug06)	216 "Other" asteroids with unusual orbits , including possible Oort cloud objects.
tnos.zip (81KB, updated 26Aug06)	1007 TransNeptunian Objects TNOs are also called "Kuiper Belt Objects"
plutinos.zip (3KB) (14-Oct-2002)	15 Plutinos. These are a few of the TransNeptunian Objects which are in a 3:2 orbital resonance with Neptune just as Pluto is. They're included in the TNOs Zip archive above, but here they're designated as "moons" so their orbits can be seen. The objects included in this Addon are the ones listed at http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/faculty/jewitt/kb/plutino.html which discusses their significance.
plutinos-20060826.zip (18KB) (updated 26Aug06)	199 Plutinos. This Addon should include all of the bodies cataloged in the older Plutino Addon listed above, although I haven't actually verified it. A surprising fraction, ~20%, of the ~1000 Trans-Neptunian Objects discovered by the summer of 2006 are in 3:2 resonance with Neptune. Here are 199 TNOs which have a SemiMajor Axis value within 0.5AU of Pluto's. The bodies in this Addon are also included in the TNO Addon above.
astorb.zip (290KB, 26aug06)	2140 minor planets These asteroids were extracted from "The Asteroid Orbital Elements Database" of Edward Bowell at ftp://ftp.lowell.edu/pub/elgb/astorb.html The objects selected were those which had diameters included, which had been measured by IRAS. The orbital elements for the major asteroids differ somewhat from the values included with Celestia. Caveat emptor.
A few interesting objects
8250_cornell.ssc (1KB, 18Sep2002)	Asteroid 8250 Cornell: The asteroid named for Cornell. "Highly inclined and slightly eccentric."
2003_cp20.ssc (1KB, updated 03March2020) Now formally 163693 Atira	2003 CP20 Orbit Cel:// URL for "2003 CP20" (install 2003_cp20.ssc first) Discovered February 12, 2003, by LINEAR, Asteroid 2003 CP20 is the first asteroid confirmed to have an orbit entirely within that of the Earth.
2004dw.ssc (1KB, 22-Feb-2004)	Larger than Quaoar but smaller than Pluto, 2004 DW is the one of the largest TNOs found. See http://www.gps.caltech.edu/~chad/2004dw/ for details about its recent discovery.
	2004 DW's distant orbit Cel:// URL for this viewpoint
2003vb12.ssc (1KB, 15-Mar-2004)	Larger than Quaoar but smaller than Pluto, 2003 VB12, also known as Sedna, is the one of the most distant solar system objects found. It's probably a member of the "inner Oort" cloud. See http://www.gps.caltech.edu/~mbrown/sedna/ for details about its recent discovery.
	2003 VB12's distant orbit Cel:// URL for this viewpoint

3.2.1: Visited by spacecraft.
3.2.2: NEOs.

3.2.2.1: Past Close Calls.
3.2.2.2: Future Close Calls.

3.2.3: Trojans.
3.2.4: Others.

• How to transform orbital elements into Celestia's SSC format
• Selden's List of Resources for Celestia

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This Web page is maintained by Selden Ball at Wilson Lab.
Please send any comments or corrections to seb@lepp.cornell.edu