Primary Objects (mpc_sbn.primary_objects)

Description

The Primary objects table contains all the objects that have been designated by the Minor Planet Center. This includes minor planets, comets and natural satellites.

Both packed and unpacked forms are included in the table for the primary provisional designations. Some fields are not being currently populated.

Schema and field descriptions follow the MPC primary_objects documentation.

Attribution

This research has made use of data and/or services provided by the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center.

Columns

Name Type UCD Unit Description
id int meta.id
meta.main

PostgreSQL automatically generated identifier.
packed_primary_provisional_designation char meta.id

Packed form of the primary provisional designation (e.g. K17P08M).
unpacked_primary_provisional_designation char meta.id

Unpacked form of the primary provisional designation (e.g. 2017 PM8).
status int meta.code

Result of the orbit fitting. This is still not used.
standard_minor_planet boolean meta.code

Boolean to indicate whether the orbit of the object is specified in the standard_minor_planet table. This is not used right now, but we might use it in the future.
standard_epoch boolean meta.code

If the object is in the standard_minor_planet table, this boolean indicates whether an orbit at the standard-epoch is populated.
orbfit_epoch boolean meta.code

If the object is in the standard_minor_planet table, this boolean indicates whether the orbit at the mid-observation epoch is populated.
nongravs boolean meta.code

Boolean to indicate whether the orbit of the object is specified in the table containing orbits with nongravitational perturbations. At the moment this is not used because we do not have a table for the orbits computed including nongravitational perturbations, even though we compute them. We might use this flag in the future to indicate whether we computed the orbit of the object using non-gravitational perturbations.
satellite boolean meta.code

Boolean to indicate whether the object-orbit is specified in the satellite table.
comet boolean meta.code

Boolean to indicate whether the object-orbit is specified in the comet table. The values are currently false because we are not saving comet orbits in a comet table.
barycentric boolean meta.code

Boolean to indicate whether the orbit for the object is in a barycentric table. The values for this field are always false because we are not computing barycentric orbits.
no_orbit boolean meta.code

Flag to indicate those cases for which it was not possible to compute an orbit.
orbit_publication_references char meta.bib

Array of references to MPC publication(s) containing this particular orbit calculation (e.g. DOU MPEC, mid-month, Monthly-MPC, etc).
flag_all_object_obs_consistent boolean meta.code

Flag to indicate if all observations for an object have been checked to be consistent with obs files. We are not currently using this field.
flag_orbit_calculated_from_consistent_obs boolean meta.code

Flag to indicate if the orbit was calculated using the observations flagged as consistent. This flag is not used.
flag_allowed_external boolean meta.code

Flag to indicate if the orbit has been computed using all the observations available and if the observations were consistent with the flat files. This flag is not used.
created_at timestamp time.creation

Date and time of initial row insert.
updated_at timestamp time.modification

Date and time of latest row update.
orbit_published int meta.code

Flag indicating if the orbit has been published in a Circular. Field values are: 0=unpublished ; 1=published as MPEC; 2=published in DOU ; 3=published in mid-month ; 4=published in monthly. Please note that we are talking about orbit publication and not object designations.
object_type int meta.code

Integer to indicate the object type as defined in: https://minorplanetcenter.net/mpcops/documentation/object-types/