NeocpEphemerisRecord

NeocpEphemerisRecord Schema

Description: One epoch of a NEOCP object's stored Scout (Mode E) ephemeris.

GEOCENTRIC on purpose (Scout ``obs-code=500``): one shared,
site-agnostic ephemeris that every telescope converts locally. The
per-epoch geocentric ``range_au`` (Scout ``ranges=true``) is what makes
that conversion exact — with distance, astropy's ICRS→GCRS/AltAz
transforms apply topocentric parallax per site, the same way
element-computed positions do. Without it the object would be treated
as at infinity: up to ~30 arcmin of site-dependent error for a
close approacher at 0.005 au (8.79 arcsec / range_au).

Rate + position angle are stored per epoch (not just RA/Dec) because
the node registers frames along the predicted motion vector for
synthetic non-sidereal stacking, and the dwell/FOV-transit feasibility
gate consumes them. Per-epoch uncertainty is stored because Scout's
sigma-pos grows into the future and the containment gate must use the
uncertainty at the *planned* time, not now.

Properties

Name	Type	Description
id	Integer	No description
neocp_object_id	Integer	No description
epoch	DateTime	No description
ra_deg	Float	No description
dec_deg	Float	No description
rate_arcsec_per_min	Float	Plane-of-sky motion rate at this epoch
pos_angle_deg	Float	Motion position angle — the shift-and-stack vector
v_mag	Float	Apparent V at this epoch (exposure sizing)
pos_uncertainty_arcmin	Float	1-sigma plane-of-sky uncertainty at this epoch
range_au	Float (Optional)	Geocentric range at this epoch (Scout Mode E 'ranges' median 're'). Enables exact topocentric parallax per site; nullable for rows ingested before ranges were requested — the resolver then falls back to a direction-only (at-infinity) coordinate.

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