Table information for 'obscode.data'

General

This table is available for ADQL queries and through the TAP endpoint.

Resource Description: List of Observatory Codes assigned by the Minor Planet Center (MPC). The codes are used in cataloguing astrometric observations of small bodies in the solar system. A code is unique for a certain location and consists of three digits or one letter and two digits. In this representation, we give the observatory code, the geocentric coordinates, and the observatory designation.

For a list of all services and tables belonging to this table's resource, see Information on resource 'Observatory Codes'

Citing this table

This table has an associated publication. If you use data from it, it may be appropriate to reference 1983MPC..7759...... (ADS BibTeX entry for the publication) either in addition to or instead of the service reference.

To cite the table as such, we suggest the following BibTeX entry:

@MISC{vo:obscode_data,
  year=2014,
  title={Observatory Codes},
  author={Minor Planet Center},
  url={http://data.xao.ac.cn/tableinfo/obscode.data},
  howpublished={{VO} resource provided by the {XAO} Data Center}
}

Resource Documentation

In addition to the values given in the original MPC list, we give the geocentric and geodetic latitudes and the height (more or less above sea level) computed from the parallax constants given in the source. The data in MPC's list is given to three to six decimal places, so the accuracy of these values is usually not better than a couple of dozen meters (and can be substantially worse at times).

Columns

Sorted by DB column index. [Sort alphabetically]

NameTable Head DescriptionUnitUCD
code Code Observatory Code assigned by the Minor Planet Center N/A meta.id;meta.code
long Long. Longitude of the observatory deg pos.earth.long
cosphip rho cos(phi') Parallax constant, cosine N/A N/A
sinphip rho sin(phi') Parallax constant, sine N/A N/A
gclat GC Lat. Geocentric latitude of the observatory deg pos.earth.lat;pos.geodetic
gdlat GD Lat. Geodetic latitude of the observatory WGS84 deg pos.earth.lat;pos.geodetic
height Alt. Altitude of the observatory m pos.earth.alitude;pos.geodetic
name Name Operator-chosen designation of the Observatory N/A meta.id;meta.main

Columns that are parts of indices are marked like this.

Other

The following services may use the data contained in this table:

VOResource

VO nerds may sometimes need VOResource XML for this table.