NEIOD ☄️

A modern and open implementation of Gauss's method for the Initial Orbit Determination of Near-Earth Objects (Minor Planets)

NEIOD is focused on the initial orbital determination for Near-Earth Objects (specifically, Asteroids). It involves functions for handling observational data, calculating positions, implementing Gauss's method for initial orbit determination, calculating orbital elements, solving Kepler's equation, and plotting orbits using Python and astronomy-related libraries.

NEIOD is valuable for students, enthusiasts, astronomers, and anyone interested in celestial mechanics. It provides tools and functions to analyze observational data, determine orbits of celestial objects, calculate orbital elements, and visualize orbits, which are essential tasks in the study of celestial bodies.

All this being open source.

Requirements

NEOID requires the following Python packages:

Numpy
Scipy
Astropy
Astroquery
Matplotlib
Pandas
Poliastro (forked version)

NEOID is supported on macOS and Windows on Python 3.11.

You can install these libraries using requirements.txt in the source:

pip install -r requirements.txt

Installation and Use

Download this repository.
Read the docstrings on both initial_orbit_determination.py and iod_functions.py to understand how to use the functions and scripts effectively. This means understanding the input parameters, expected data formats, and the expected output.

When running, the code itself will tell the you everything it needs and the expected format.
Run the code with initial_orbit_determination.py
Test the code with the provided example data in the data folder. Also you can try and modify some parameters like nmax or tol in the gauss_method function to see how the code behaves and how they can be adapted for your specific needs.

You can also try modifying the input data to see how the accuracy changes, for example.
Use you own data and calculate orbits!

License

NEIOD is released under the MIT license. Please refer to the LICENSE file.

The MIT License (MIT)

Copyright (c) 2024 José Braulio Batista Mendoza

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all
copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE
SOFTWARE.

Feedback and Collaboration

Documentation: Both scripts should include detailed documentation explaining the purpose of each function, the expected inputs and outputs, and examples of usage.

You can contact me directly if you have specific questions not covered by the documentation.
GitHub Repository Issues: If you find any bugs or would like to change/add things, you can use this repository's issue tracker for known issues, discussions, and possible solutions.

Maintenance

The project is likely to be maintained and contributed to by me and anoyone interested in celestial mechanics, astronomy, and Python programming. Users can reach out for support, contributions, or to report issues.

While the author of this repository (me, @joebro1907) is new somewhat new to Python, he will try his best :)

joebro1907 / NEIOD