[find_orb] re various updates - mpc data download access not happening

[Bill Gray]

Hi John,

    That issue with being unable to 'grab' astrometry from MPC is weird. 
  I've tried the 32-bit version both under Wine on Linux and on my Win1 
0 box.  (I've not fired up the WinME box,  but I don't think the code 
would run on anything before XP anyway.)

    You're right,  the 'MPC astrometry grabber' didn't exist in the 
older version.  It works (when it _does_ work,  anyway!) by requesting a 
file from MPC such as

https://www.minorplanetcenter.net/db_search/show_object?object_id=2014+AA&btnG=MPC+Database+Search

    (insert desired designation where 2014+AA is).  The result is thrown 
away;  as you found,  all the above does is to cause MPC to extract the 
astrometry to a temporary file,  so we request that :

https://www.minorplanetcenter.net/tmp/2014_AA.txt

    ...with similar designation swapping.  I add in a little header 
saying when the file was generated;  if you ask for 2014 AA again and 
Find_Orb realizes the existing version is less than three hours old,  it 
assumes no updates have occurred and doesn't pester MPC servers again.

    None of which,  though,  explains why you can't get it to work.  I 
was going to suggsest copy/pasting the above URLs into your browser, 
but it sounds as if you tried that.  Maybe a permissions issue?  Anyone 
else run into this and have thoughts?

    The font defaults to be Courier New.  It has the advantage of being 
a monospaced font available on all forks of Windows going back to at 
least XP.  Can't say it's a thing of beauty,  though.  Consola or 
Lucida,  if you have them,  are a good choice.  The window is resizable; 
  if you choose a _really_ large font,  you may have to shrink the 
window and lose some rows and columns.

    Yes,  there's no more "auto-solve" option.  That option was useful 
back in the days when Find_Orb didn't try all _that_ hard to get a good 
solution on the first go,  because a lot of users were simply curious 
about orbit determination;  you'd get an approximate answer and would 
play with the various orbit improvement techniques to find the exact 
solution.  The focus is now much more on providing a good orbit and good 
ephemerides right out of the box.  You're getting the "auto-solved" 
orbit by default.

-- Bill

On 10/30/21 11:18 AM, f_orb at tutanota.com wrote:
> Hi Bill
> 
> My old find orb, admittedly very rarely used, was dated March 2019, so I thought I'd download this latest version to have a looksee.  It includes MPC 'grabbing', which I can't seem to see as being available on the old one, so I thought I'll give it a go.
> 
> Well, I unzipped the 32bit version to a windows root on a hard drive (and later into a dedicated folder falled find_orb in case that was the issue) and it wouldn't fetch data from MPC.
> 
> I keep getting stuff like this in the generated temp_obs.txt file :-
> 
> COM UNIX time 1635604034 (Sat Oct 30 15:27:14 2021) https://www.minorplanetcenter.net/db_search/show_object?object_id=2014+AA&btnG=MPC+Database+Search
> COM Obj 2014 AA
> COM rval = -2146697208
> 
> and find_orb says that that file has 'no objects' in a popup message, or rather that it can find no objects in the file.
> 
> I've cut and pasted that directly into the browser, and it works fine, so it isn't that.  I've stared at grap_mpc with a hex editor and the urls cut and pasted from that (with a name tagged on the end) works fine.
> 
> The download data file grab, which I see is a temp generated file (so you HAVE to go via the database link first to generate this data file) looks fine too.  However, you are using %s in the bit of the code I can follow so I'm not sure if grab_mpc is sending /tmp/2014_AA instead of /tmp/2014 AA to mpc, as the latter will NOT work.
> 
> But I'm getting a sneaking suspiscion that it's more of a 'file not found' issue for temp_obs.txt rather than an 'object not found' issue IN temp_obs.txt, with a red herring error message.
> 
> 
> Sideways : I have to say that the new interface, compared to the 2019 winbox style version, is somewhat ghastly.  And it is a good job I have a 27 inch monitor on large fonts too!  It's not that I'm not used to oldstyle DOS console front ends, my favourite lunar eclipse emulator is a bit of 30 year old dos16 for instance (even though I have Guide) and I've to fiddle to get other old good dos stuff to work whenever it is OS upgrade time (try running DOS version of GEM based old code in windows, surprisingly easy, but then getting that to run in WINE, just to see it done!), usually highly mathematical stuff with no available alternative.  I assume though that a console version makes it more cross platform compilable without interface compatability hassles and/or dedicated versions.  I'll get used to it, I actually find DOS text graphics menues quite refreshing sometimes, it's probably just the small font that's niggling me, I'll have to change the size, which I notice is the only windows style menu, but that will likely cause menu per row issues.
> 
> I played with a couple of the examples, I surmise that there isn't an 'auto-solve' "button" anymore because it automatically auto-solves on data import?
> 
> Cheers
> 
> John G
> 
> PS I'd guess you're fully linux these days, but you can't still be using old win millennium if you are testing 64 bit windows versions?
>