MPO Canopus – Minor Planet Center Reports
Using the AutoMeasure feature of
Canopus, you can quickly measure a target's position using up to 75 reference stars from
one or more catalogs (the MPC strongly urges that you use one and only one for a given
image). The results are displayed on the Reductions page, as shown above.
By clicking the Save button at lower right, you save all the data for the observation,
including that for the reference stars, into a small binary file (*.AST - for astrometry).
Once you've measured a batch of images, it's very simple to generate an MPC compatible
report (a text file) that you can attach to an email. Some of the required information for
the report is stored via the Configuration form.
The MPC button on the Reductions page is used to select one or more of the AST files
and the name of the report to be generated. After you've done that, Canopus takes over and
produces the report in a text file editor for review.
Normally, you should not need to edit anything. If you do, be very careful not to
change the required formatting of the file.
