Asteroid Institute Moving Source Catalog (AIMS)
Search AIMS detections and detection-backed exposures, retrieve an object's complete MPC observation history, match your own ADES observations, and move from a table row to source-linked images and scientific provenance.
Start with an object, a region of sky and time, or observations you already have. Each path leads to the same inspectable AIMS records.
Enter a numbered, provisional, comet, interstellar, or familiar object name. Data Explorer resolves the identity and returns the complete MPC observation history, with the closest linked survey record for each observation when one is available.
Search detections or detection-backed exposures by UTC time, dataset, observatory, band, and an optional sky cone. Snapshot-stable pages preserve exact totals, while shareable query URLs retain the submitted filters.
Paste or upload up to 5,000 ADES PSV observations at a time. Data Explorer automatically pins the daily or monthly AIMS Parquet resources that cover their dates, ranks nearby candidates by angular separation and timing, preserves unmatched input rows, and opens candidates in the same detection-detail workflow.
Object history
Data Explorer returns the complete MPC history for the resolved object, not a clipped preview. Virtualized rows keep large histories responsive while retaining the full arc for inspection and navigation.
Archive search
Combine time, source, observatory, band, and true spherical cone constraints. Switch between individual detections and the exposure-level view without losing the scientific context of the rows that produced each result.
Degree, arcminute, and arcsecond inputs are converted to exact spherical containment, including RA wrap and polar geometry.
Group retained detections by source exposure and inspect the contributing rows without implying a complete survey footprint inventory.
Detection detail and images
Each detection has a durable link and a structured record for identity, time, sky position, uncertainty and correlation, photometry, catalogs, exposure metadata, and source provenance. AIMS crossmatches and MPC object attribution are presented as separate scientific relationships.
Where a source supports imagery, request or reopen its scientific products in context. Data Explorer supports provider-native image families, PNG quick looks, authenticated FITS inspection with WCS and pixel readout, and direct downloads.
Traceable by design
Data Explorer is a view into Asteroid Institute's AIMS holdings. It keeps source rows visible, distinguishes observation equivalence from object attribution, and reports the snapshot and execution context that produced each result.
Preserve native survey and MPC representations, with explicit links when AIMS identifies them as the same observation.
Stable cursors, catalog-generation identity, resource provenance, and cache status make result pages reproducible and explainable.
Query details report elapsed time, billed bytes, and organization credits while keeping the science result primary.
Holdings, date coverage, selection rules, astrometric and photometric catalogs, and image availability vary by source. Read the public AIMS provenance before drawing completeness conclusions.
Browse 5 read-only Data Explorer results. No account is required. Each page shows an MPC observation history or a night of AIMS exposures and detections in the Data Explorer interface, with linked survey records and saved detection pages with their images.
The complete MPC observation history of the near-Earth asteroid 2024 YR4, with ATLAS survey records linked to the MPC observations they match.
The newest MPC observations of the potentially hazardous asteroid (99942) Apophis, resolved from its name, with linked ATLAS survey records.
MPC observations of the active main-belt asteroid (6478) Gault during its 2019 activity, with linked ATLAS and ZTF survey records.
The newest MPC observations of the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS, with linked ATLAS survey records.
Detection-backed Rubin/LSST exposures within 1.5° of the (2026 PG) field on one night, with one exposure's detections and a Rubin detection's alert-packet images.
Sign in to search AIMS, retrieve complete MPC histories, match ADES observations, and inspect available source imagery.