Lowell astorbDB Documentation

Introduction

Lowell Observatory maintains database of asteroid orbital and physical properties known historically as astorb.dat. This flat file continues to be maintained and is accessible at https://asteroid.lowell.edu/main/astorb/. Since 2015, there has been an ongoing effort to mature the astorb.dat into a modern relational database. This database, known as astorbDB expands the capabilities of the historic flat file and underlies many of the tools on https://asteroid.lowell.edu/.

Though astorb.dat will continue to be maintained and accessible, astorbDB is significantly more flexible and powerful and is the recommended channel for accessing data. https://asteroid.lowell.edu/ is a good place to start for querying common data. For example, see AstEph for ephemeris or AstInfo for physical parameters. A more advanced data query tool is the QueryBuilder which provides a graphical interface for querying accross most astorbDB tables. Finally, for the most advances and programatic use cases, a GraphQL API is available to perform queries.

Reference

For history and detail on astorb.dat and the astorbDB structure see the astorbDB citation