MPC orbits

An orbit-catalog snapshot adopted from the Minor Planet Center (MPC). The MPC has assigned “observatory code” X05 to the Rubin Observatory.

Schema: mpc_orbits table

Access

The MPC orbits catalog is accessible via the TAP service only.

TAP

• Table name: mpc_orbits

• Columns: <tbd>

• Rows: <tbd>

Butler

Not available.

Description

The Minor Planet Center (MPC) is the single worldwide location for receipt and distribution of positional measurements of small bodies. The MPC is responsible for the identification, designation, and orbit computation for all of these objects.

The mpc_orbits table is a snapshot of the MPC PostgreSQL orbit table. It contains MPC orbital elements, photometric parameters, fit metadata, and uncertainties; it does not contain Rubin difference-image detections and was not derived by fitting DP2 observations. The upstream definitions and field semantics are documented in the MPC replicated-tables schema.

For end-user convenience, DP2 adds a designation column containing the unpacked primary provisional designation. It is identical row by row to unpacked_primary_provisional_designation and provides a readable join key to SSSource and SSObject. For performance, prefer SQL joins on integer identifiers such as ssObjectId wherever they are available.

The delivered mpc_orbits table is the same 2026 March 13 MPC snapshot used as input to DP2 association.

Processing

The table was adopted from the MPC database; its contents were not recomputed by DP2 processing.

Tutorials

See the 200-level catalog Tutorials for a notebook on the MPC orbits table.