SBIdent

A Python package for querying the JPL Small Body Identification API

About

The Small Body Identification API returns position information (equitorial coordinates or orbital elements) for known Solar System Objects within a field of view at a specified time for an observer location. The SBIdent package is a lightweight implementation of this API that returns results in an Astropy table.

Use case: identifying Solar System Objects in difference images

The image below is an 18 frame composite difference image from TESS observations. The circles show detections that match a SBIdent Solar System Object position at least 6 times.

Installation

pip install git+https://github.com/bengebre/sbident

Basic usage

from sbident import SBIdent
from astropy.time import Time
from astropy.coordinates import SkyCoord

mpc_obs = '567'                         #observer location (MPC observatory code)
time = Time('2021-10-01 00:00:00')      #observing time
center = SkyCoord(10, -20, unit="deg")  #observing field of view center

#call API with above parameters and (optional) magnitude limit filter
#and (optional) field of view half width (degrees) constraint
sbid = SBIdent(mpc_obs, time, center, maglim=19, hwidth=1)

print(sbid.results)                     #table of SSOs returned

    Object name     Astrometric RA (hh:mm:ss) Astrometric Dec (dd mm'ss") Dist. from center RA (") Dist. from center Dec (") Dist. from center Norm (") Visual magnitude (V) RA rate ("/h) Dec rate ("/h)
------------------- ------------------------- --------------------------- ------------------------ ------------------------- -------------------------- -------------------- ------------- --------------
  35889 (1999 JA81)               00:41:42.21                -19 04'47.8"                     1.E3                      3.E3                      3614.                 18.6    -3.174E+01     -1.306E+01
 57855 (2001 XT144)               00:40:35.35                -20 39'18.8"                     498.                     -2.E3                      2411.                 18.8    -3.346E+01     -9.137E+00
  91101 (1998 HK15)               00:37:26.23                -20 33'44.7"                    -2.E3                     -2.E3                      2963.                 17.7    -3.600E+01     -6.281E-01
 93867 (2000 WQ115)               00:41:43.02                -19 05'14.9"                     1.E3                      3.E3                      3593.                 17.8    -3.701E+01     -8.077E-01
  120306 (2004 KE6)               00:36:31.25                -20 30'11.0"                    -3.E3                     -2.E3                      3451.                 19.0    -3.658E+01     -2.018E+00
 172806 (2004 GT10)               00:40:33.40                -19 43'58.6"                     471.                      961.                      1071.                 18.7    -2.659E+01     -1.926E+01
255370 (2005 WS111)               00:41:44.59                -20 05'42.9"                     1.E3                     -343.                      1512.                 18.8    -3.015E+01     -5.458E+00

More information

See the documentation. More examples available in this notebook.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to the JPL Solar System Dynamics group for making this API available and Alan Chamberlin in particular for providing support while I was building this tool. Documentation generated by pdoc.