MPO Asteroid Viewing Guide - Asteroid Searches
The AltAz/Photo Search page allows you to search for asteroids in two ways
AltAz
Finds asteroids above the horizon given the location, date, and time. The search can be
filtered to include asteroids within a certain magnitude range, range of numbers, or
minimum distance above the horizon. The generated positions are not perturbed, i.e., they
do not take into account the affects of other planets.
Photo
Finds asteroids near a given position given the date and time. The search can be
filtered to include asteroids in a certain range in magnitude range, range of numbers. The
generated positions do take into account planetary perturbations to increase the accuracy
and help identify suspects near galaxies, etc.
The results for either search are stored in separate database tables but displayed in
the save viewer. Which result set is displayed depends on the item selected in the
"Search Type" control. The results are kept until you hit the Clear button,
meaning you can generate data for one type of search and not automatically destroy the
results from the other.
