Implementing ephemerides facilities in the Vizier and Aladin tools of the CDS in Strasbourg
by
William Thuillot
IMCCE-Paris Observatory (France)
Coauthors: Berthier J., Vachier F., Lainey V.,Arlot J.-E., Fernique P., Ochsenbein F., Genova F.

The Institut de mécanique céleste et de calcul des éphémérides (IMCCE, Paris Observatory) is willing to provide information on Solar System objects to the Astronomical Virtual Observatory. The first step is the interconnection of IMCCE ephemerides servers with the Vizier and Aladin tools of the Centre de données astronomiques de Strasbourg (CDS). The services have been made interoperable, using the International Virtual Observatory standard VOTable. A request related to the position of asteroids made by users of Aladin or Vizier is transmitted to the ephemerides servers of IMCCE and the answer is quickly and automatically returned. Equipped with this new facility, Aladin allows in particular users to explore photographic archives stored at CDS, observatory archives accessible through Aladin, or to process their own images, in order to identify asteroids. The ephemerides are obtained from a numerical integration using as initial conditions the orbital data extracted from the Lowell database of asteroids. This work is still in development but, at this stage, the method is well established and we intend to give access to this tool in a few months.

Date received: February 26, 2005