The program calculates the positions from elements contained in the file asteroid.base. The path to this file may be changed by the environment variable CATALOGHOME. Asteroids may also be referred to by number. The names are not case sensitive. The elements are the osculating elements from the Ephemerides of Minor Planets from St. Petersburg. for September 5, 1994.
When successful, the program prints out line(s) similar to the following:
07:08:36.1 +23:15:40 2000.0 14.3 Edith
Where the first three fields are the RA, Dec, and epoch (actually equinox), the fourth is the predicted V magnitude and the fifth field is the asteroid name. The coordinates are astrometric and have been corrected for light travel time, but not aberration or nutation.
Note: asteroids whose name contain included spaces must have underscores substituted for the spaces. This format is used on output also so that the name is one field.
The osculating elements of the major planets are also included for estimating their positions.
If the verbose option is specified the X,Y,Z coordinates of the earth and the asteroid are printed out as well as other parameters, such as the distance from Earth (Delta), the distance from the sun (r), the solar angle (beta). All distances are in a.u. and angles in degrees. All XYZ coordinates are heliocentric.
If the all option is specified the positions of all asteroids in the data base is calculated (including major planets).