The astorb database at Lowell Observatory

TL;DR

The astorb database at Lowell Observatory is a comprehensive, actively maintained catalog of Solar System asteroids, integrating physical data and supporting research tools through modernized infrastructure since 2015.

Contribution

This paper details the modernization of the astorb database, including its infrastructure, data integration, and software tools, enhancing accessibility and research utility.

Findings

Expanded asteroid data with physical properties

Modernized database infrastructure and web applications

Supported diverse research tools

Abstract

The astorb database at Lowell Observatory is an actively curated catalog of all known asteroids in the Solar System. astorb has heritage dating back to the 1970's and has been publicly accessible since the 1990's. Beginning in 2015 work began to modernize the underlying database infrastructure, operational software, and associated web applications. That effort has involved the expansion of astorb to incorporate new data such as physical properties (e.g. albedo, colors, spectral types) from a variety of sources. The data in astorb are used to support a number of research tools hosted at https://asteroid.lowell.edu. Here we present a full description of the software tools, computational foundation, and data products upon which the astorb ecosystem has been built.