Week of December 15, 2019 'All Space Questions' thread

Hey there friend. My recommendation was going to be to use JPL's Horizon system, as you can request ephemerides for different celestial bodies on different dates. Part of the epehemeris data contains the "Time of periapsis". you could download once a year or something (very easy to do from the web interface I added above), and it'll generate a text file with what you're looking for. You'll then just have to parse it to get a list of the dates. (**NOTE: The time of periapsis is given in julian days**, so you'll need to convert to a gregorian calendar date to make it readable).

I just gave this a go quickly and compared my results with what was provided on the time and date website, which gives the perihelion date and time for 2019-2023. I matched closely but was off by a few hours, which on some occasions, ended up pushing it to the wrong day if the time of periapsis was near midnight. I'm unsure why, and can't throw more time at it right now (maybe later though).

But Horizon's would be my best suggestion for this kind of thing. If anyone has any better suggestions for this specific type of issue, feel free to provide input!

/r/space Thread Parent