Asteroids

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In order to display accurate asteroid positions, SkyMap Pro needs to have access to up-to-date orbital elements. Not only are new asteroids constantly being discovered, but all orbital elements slowly change with time, and should only be used for a few months at most.

The organization responsible for coordinating new asteroid discoveries and producing authoritative orbital elements is the Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams. They kindly make this data available in a format directly suitable for use by SkyMap Pro.

To download the latest set of orbital elements containing information about all "numbered" asteroids, proceed as follows:

1. Follow this link to download the latest set of asteroid orbital elements to your computer. This will be a file called "SkyMap.ZIP".
2. Unzip the file to extract the data catalog; this will be called "SkyMap.CAT".
3. In SkyMap Pro, select the Catalog page of the asteroid configuration dialog, and open the new file. Exit the asteroid configuration dialog, and select the File/Save Defaults menu item to make the new catalog the default catalog for future runs of the program.

Last Modified May 10, 2006