Installing and Running Find_Orb for Linux

Find_Orb is a freeware program, created by Project Pluto, which computes orbital elements from observations (RA, Dec, time) of solar system objects. Find_Orb is distributed by Project Pluto under the GPL (GNU General Public License), version 2, meaning it may be freely distributed/modfied for non-commercial purposes (source code is available at Project Pluto).

Command-line install and usage instructions (by A. Waszczak, Jul-10-2013):

(1) Create a directory for the program:

>> mkdir $HOME/find_orb
>> cd $HOME/find_orb

(2) Download the tar.gz file (containing an unmodified version of the March-2012 find_orb build) to that directory:

>> wget http://astro.caltech.edu/~waszczak/find_orb_linux_archive.tar.gz -O $HOME/find_orb/find_orb_linux_archive.tar.gz

(3) Unzip it:

>> tar -zxvf find_orb_linux_archive.tar.gz

(4) The program is already compiled for certain versions of linux, but to better ensure it runs with your own version, run the following two compile commands:

>> make -f linlunar.mak
>> make -f linmake

(5) Before test running the interactive version of find_orb, check that your terminal window (command window) is roughly 120 characters wide by 50 characters tall or larger (e.g. by dragging the window corner), to ensure the text-based GUI it opens will fit in your window.

(6) Test run the interactive version of find_orb (on an example object---a PTF-discovered comet):

>> $HOME/find_orb/find_orb test_obj.txt

(7) The text-based GUI is best operated with keystrokes. Use UP and DOWN arrow keys to move the selection to different observations and notice the changes in the displayed information this causes. Press 'X' key to toggle on/off the current selected observation. Press 'F' to recompute the orbit (e.g. if you excluded some observations). The 'G' and H' keys have a similar role as 'F' but use more basic solution methods. You can generate an ephemeris for the object by pressing the 'M' key.

(8) To quit the find_orb GUI and return to the command line, hit CTRL+C.

(9) Test run the GUI on a data file containing multiple objects:

>> $HOME/find_orb/find_orb test_data.txt

(10) When the GUI opens for multiple objects, use the arrow keys to select one and press spacebar to open it. To return to the list of objects, press SHIFT+N. To quit, press CTRL+C.

(11) Test run the non-GUI version of find_orb on the single-object data file:

>> $HOME/find_orb/fo test_obj.txt

(12) In addition to a brief output to your terminal session, the above command outputs (or overwrites) the following files in the $HOME/find_orb directory: gauss.out, observe.txt, elements.out and mpc.fmt. These text files contain the detailed information on the orbital solution, which, in the GUI version, would have been displayed to the user on-screen. Some of these output files are also passively created when running the GUI version.

(13) Test run the non-GUI version of find_orb on the multiple-object data file (you can stop it at any time with CTRL+C). The non-GUI-version is designed to handle large lists of objects like this.

>> $HOME/find_orb/fo test_data.txt

(14) Futher information on this program is at http://projectpluto.com/find_orb.htm.