New module to query Lowell Observatory astorbDB database

[hhsieh00]

This is a new module for querying the Lowell Observatory astorbDB database (see issue #3129), specifically using REST APIs used to run their AstInfo tool (https://asteroid.lowell.edu/astinfo/). The AstInfo class in this module specifically retrieves designation, orbital element, orbit, albedo, color, taxonomy, lightcurve, dynamical family, and escape route data for asteroids catalogued in the Lowell astorbDB database.

[mkelley]

Looks good and very useful in general. Some initial comments and questions to address while you continue testing.

[bsipocz]

Thanks @mkelley for the review. I haven't looked into it in any meaningful way yet, but I notice that there are a lot of comments on async stuff. We should remove/rework the template module as a lot has changed. E.g. there is a preference of supporting actual async/sync API and not just with the early template hackary. So I would suggest to so that, too, if the service support async, then opt into that with a keyword argument, but don't duplicate the methods with the decorator.

#2598

or one PR that did the keyword approach: #3201 or the ESA modules also have a async_job keyword to switch between sync and async query modes.

[mkelley]

I'm not sure why the checks didn't run. @hhsieh00 You might want to try to git rebase with an updated astroquery/main and then push the updates.

[codecov]

Codecov Report

❌ Patch coverage is 98.29060% with 4 lines in your changes missing coverage. Please review.
✅ Project coverage is 72.03%. Comparing base (ef48060) to head (f01791f).
⚠️ Report is 17 commits behind head on main.

Files with missing lines	Patch %	Lines
astroquery/lowellmps/core.py	98.21%	4 Missing ⚠️

Additional details and impacted files

@@            Coverage Diff             @@
##             main    #3203      +/-   ##
==========================================
+ Coverage   71.72%   72.03%   +0.30%     
==========================================
  Files         235      238       +3     
  Lines       20253    20487     +234     
==========================================
+ Hits        14527    14757     +230     
- Misses       5726     5730       +4     

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[mkelley]

Looks good, thanks again! I'll ask a general question for @bsipocz , this PR adds about 0.4 MB of test data. Is that OK, or should we consider reducing it?

[mkelley]

@bsipocz is it OK that this particular _async method returns a dictionary of responses? _parse_result appropriately handles it, so the class is internally consistent.

[mkelley]

Maybe some additional comments could be added here to help with code maintenance. It seems to me that this is primarily about assigning units to returned values. Is there a place in the astorb documentation where the units were defined?

[hhsieh00]

added some more specific comments

[hhsieh00]

I can reduce some of the test data. Multiple objects are necessary since some have null results (e.g., main-belt asteroids don't have escape route data, while NEOs don't have family data, and relatively newly discovered asteroids don't have lightcurve, taxonomic, or albedo data), but I can reduce it to less than what's there currently.