WCO237 Observatory -
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Free "asteroid" utility for Skymap Pro
SkyMap Pro is a planetarium and star-
The author Chris Marriott has closed down the webpage and sales of Skymap due to retirement (he started in 1986)
Unfortunately, the download link for the updated asteroid file is no longer active (https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/iau/Ephemerides/Comets/Soft01Cmt.txt) and it is no longer possible to have an updated list.
The only alternative is to use the ASTORB.DAT file which in addition to being HUGE is not directly compatible with Skymap.
For this reason I have created this page where you can download the asteroid update program in Skymap and the database updated daily and compatible with Skymap -
Every night this site downloads the original ASTORB.DAT file, and creates a reduced version of it only to the first 9999 astroids.
From the Astorb_dat_9999.exe program it will always be possible to choose which and how many asteroids should be loaded on Skymap
The mirroring of the asterod database occurs automatically every night just after midnight.
Unfortunately, sometimes the operation fails due to the harvard.edu website being unreachable.
It doesn't happen often but it happens.
In any case, the next night and then the one after etc .. the mirroring is automatically retried.
The astorb.dat and astorb_9999.dat files are downloaded, processed and prepared for SkyMap Pro by the Astorb_dat_9999.exe program which must be loaded into Skymap (video tutorial below).
Astorb_dat_9999.exe
v. 3.5 June 30, 2022
Download Astorb_dat_9999.exe latest version
Save the EXE in the same folder where is asteroid.cat file
Usually in (skymap folder)/data/
The program must have rights to write to the folder where it was saved. If the folder is PROGRAMS it may not be able to write the ASTEROID.CAT file
In this case it is advisable to use a different, new folder outside the PROGRAMS path
