Dynamic invocation of Osamu Ajiki & Ron Baalke's OrbitViewer applet

Rather than having to create the appropriate HTML for the OrbitViewer applet in a static web page, this page dynamically invokes the applet near the end of the current page given input via a form. Moreover, orbital element text can be obtained from the Minor Planet Centre (MPC) web site and the form data populated automatically, an example of which is given below. Object invocation also adds to a popup menu for later retrieval of orbital elements. Browser cookies are used to persist menu items with an expiry of 90 days.

Comet's orbital elements
Name
T
e
q
Peri
Node
Incl
Eqnx
Orbital element text pasted from IAU MPC web site, e.g. C/2001 Q4 NEAT's elements, as shown here.

Better still, obtain a list of comets from the MPC web site from which to select. *

* As of the current writing (August 2006) this works with Internet Explorer 6+ only. You need to enable Internet Explorer to automatically obtain a list of all comets and their elements from the MPC web site.


Applet's Size
Width
Height

Created by David Benn: dbenn@computer.org