Glossary

Asteroid name-number index

The index of the currently numbered asteroids including their numbers, names or designations, and SsODNet IDs. It is stored as index.pkl in the cache directory and can be updated with $ rocks update.

Cache Directory

Storage location for the retrieved ssoCards and datacloud catalogues, as well as the asteroid name-number index and ssoCard metadata files. Located in the user’s home directory as ~/.cache/rocks.

Datacloud Catalogue

The datacloud is an aggregation of publicly available data of minor planets. The catalogues it provides contain e.g. asteroid diameters and albedos (diamalbedo), asteroid proper elements (astdys), or measurements of the Yarkovsky effect (yarkovskies). Each catalogue contains data on many asteroids and each asteroid can appear multiple times in the catalogue. They are retrieved and stored as JSON files in the cache directory.

DataCloudDataFrame

The python implementation of a datacloud catalogue is the DataCloudDataFrame class. As the name suggests, it is a subclass of the pandas DataFrame and inherits its properties. The only difference to the DataFrame is the overloaded plot() method and the added weighted_average() method. by the abbreviation on the right.

Identifier

A user-provided string, float, or integer, which serves to identify an asteroid. It can refer to the asteroid’s name ("Eos"), the number (221), previous or current designations ("1882 BA"), packed designations ("I82B00A") and other aliases as defined by quaero. The identifier is not case-sensitive and frequent shortforms (such as dropping the whitespace in the designation, "1882BA") are accepted as well.

ssoCard

The ssoCard represents the best available measurements (or a product thereof) of the parameters of a single asteroid. Each asteroid has a single ssoCard and each ssoCard refers to a single asteroid. They are retrieved and stored as JSON files in the cache directory.

SsODNet

The Virtual Observatory Solar system Open Database Network SsODNet is a name resolver and data aggregator for minor planets.

SsODNet ID

The identifier used by the SsODNet database to refer to this specific asteroid. For (1) Ceres, it’s Ceres. For 2021 JB32, it’s 2021_JB32. Queries for asteroid name resolution or data are faster when providing this identifier right away.