1) Download the large MPCORB database:

MPCORB is a database of asteroid orbits maintained and can be downloaded  from Minor Planet Center. It gives orbits for all numbered and observable unnumbered asteroids.

2A) Standard  conversion:

Open  the uncompressed version in your browser and save it to MPCORB.DAT. Do not download  the complete 600.000 asteroids file but only 30.000 or so. Alternatively download MPCORB.DAT and  import in a wordpad or any other  editor. Keep the  first 30.000  asteroids or so and  remove the rest of the 600.000 asteroids. Open the MPCORB.DAT file in the internal HNSKY asteroid editor. HNSKY will then convert format. To  make permanent save to HNS_AST1.AST. HNSKY will  only read the numbered asteroids. After about 355000 numbered asteroids, MPCORB has an empthy  line and HNSKY will stop there.

2b) Faster MPCORB conversion with seperate program:

Conversion  with small DOS program

Note: The MPC provides the main database in two forms: MPCORBCR.DAT and MPCORB.DAT. Both contain exactly the same data, but the former is in PC format (with a carriage return/line feed at the end of every line of data), the latter in Unix format  (a line feed but no CR at the end of each line). 

The program is provided with the Pascal source code and a batch file for starting them easily in Windows. Just please them (.EXE and .BAT) in the same directory as the database files.
 
 
 

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