SNChecker: SN Candidate Minor Planet Checker
Use the form below to prepare a list of known minor planets in a specified
region around around the specified galaxies.
Notes on using this form are given at the bottom of this page.
If you wish to
report the non-functioning of (or errors in) this service, please
use this feedback
form.
Useful Tips
We hope that the information given below will be useful in helping you to use
the (super)nova-suspect minor-planet checker form properly.
- Date
- The date to be entered is the UT date of your observation (given to 0.1 or
0.01 of a day). The default is now. The date should be within a
year of the present. If you have an older suspect you wish to
check, please contact the
Central Bureau for Astronomical
Telegrams (for novae and supernovae) or the
Minor Planet Center (for minor
planets).
- Galaxy
- You may specify one or more galaxy names by entering the standard catalogue
abbreviation, followed by a space, then the catalogue number or descriptor.
The catalogue abbreviation should be in capital letters.
The current supported galaxy catalogues are as follows (for each entry
is given the standard abbreviation, the catalogue name and example(s)
of valid designation(s)):
- M : Messier's catalogue (M 74)
- The only entries included are the 37 galaxies.
- NGC : New General Catalogue of Nebulae and Clusters of Stars (NGC 772)
- IC : Index Catalogue (IC 12)
- UGC : Uppsala General Catalogue of Galaxies (UGC 3020)
- MCG : Morphological Catalogue of Galaxies (MCG -06-04-065, MCG +15-01-005a)
- The form of MCG designations must be as shown above. MCG -6-4-65 is
not acceptable as an alternate form of MCG -06-04-065, for example.
- Both Magellanic clouds are accessible as LMC and SMC.
Additional catalogues will be added if deemed necessary.
- Absolute Position
- The J2000.0 right ascension should be entered in one of the following forms:
HH MM; HH MM.d; HH MM.dd; HH MM SS; HH MM SS.d; or HH MM SS.dd. HH
represents the hours, MM the minutes, SS the seconds and d/dd any decimal
part of the minutes or seconds. Leading zeroes are to be given when
any quantity is less than 10.
The J2000.0 declination should be entered in one of the following forms:
sDD MM; sDD MM.d; sDD MM.dd; sDD MM SS; or sDD MM SS.d. s represents the
sign (`+' or `-', must be given), DD the degrees, MM the minutes, SS the
seconds and d/dd any decimal part of the minutes or seconds. Leading
zeroes are to be given when any quantity is less than 10.
Some examples of valid input follow.
- If the position you wish to search around is 7h13.7m, -14°2', you
would enter `07 13.7' and `-14 02' in the relevant boxes
- If the position is 14h3m8s, +1°48'.3, you would enter
`14 03 08' and `+01 48.3'.
- Radius of search
- The default setting of 15 arcminutes is thought to be appropriate for the
standard amateur setup, considering the motion of main-belt asteroids. It
may be lowered (down to 5 arcminutes) or raised (up to 300 arcminutes) as
desired. If your
specified radius exceeds the maximum allowable radius, the maximum value will
be used.
- Limiting magnitude for search
- The default setting of V = 19.0 may be changed as necessary.
Note that you should set this value to be at least 1.0 magnitude fainter
than your telescope's limiting magnitude to allow for poorly-known minor-planet
magnitudes.
- Observatory code
- By default, the calculation is performed for the geocenter (code 500).
If you wish to do the calculations for a specific site, enter the appropriate
observatory code in the writable icon.
We are very pleased to acknowledge the support of
Process Software Corporation
and their excellent VMS Web server, Purveyor.
This service runs on the
Tamkin
Foundation Computing Network.
CBAT
MPC