Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jkksz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-28T17:14:46.870Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

From telescope to MPC: Organizing the minor planets

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 May 2016

B.G. Marsden
B.G. Marsden*
Affiliation:
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics Cambridge, MA 02138 U.S.A.

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

Somewhat more than a century after its introduction for the purpose of discovering minor planets, photography is now rapidly giving way to the CCD as the technology of choice for observing these bodies. A CCD has been used in scanning mode in the University of Arizona's ‘Spacewatch’ program for the discovery of minor planets since as long ago as 1984 (Gehrels 1984, Gehrels et al. 1986), while a CCD in stare mode was first applied as a matter of routine to an established observing program for astrometric follow-up in 1989—that at the Oak Ridge Observatory in Massachusetts (McCrosky 1990). After its initial 1984–1986 success, Spacewatch was modified with the help of a larger CCD and improved computer software and with the adoption of the particular mission of searching for NEOs, or minor planets (and comets) that pass close to the earth (Rabinowitz 1991, Scotti 1994). The Oak Ridge program utilizes a 1.5-m reflector, and the first CCD observations were reduced using the Astrographic Catalogue, the mainstay of the Oak Ridge photographic program back to its inauguration in 1972, as well as of other older photographic programs in which the fields observed were significantly less than 1° across. Within months, the availability, on CD-ROMs, of the STScI Guide Star Catalogue (Villard 1989) effectively consigned the venerable AC to the scrap-heap, and the rapid development of ready-made and relatively inexpensive CCD systems (e.g., di Cicco 1992) has recently increased the volume of CCD astrometry considerably, allowing it to be conveniently and reliably carried out, even by amateur astronomers. At the present time, very nearly 50 percent of the astrometric observations, typically 6000, published each month in the Minor Planet Center's Minor Planet Circulars are obtained by means of a CCD.

Type
Part IV - Asteroids: Theory and Ephemerides
Information
Symposium - International Astronomical Union , Volume 172: Dynamics, Ephemerides and Astrometry of the Solar System , 1996 , pp. 153 - 164
Copyright
Copyright © Kluwer 1996 

References

Bowell, E., Chernykh, N.S. and Marsden, B.G., 1989. Discovery and follow-up of asteroids. In Asteroids II, eds. Binzel, R.P., Gehrels, T. and Matthews, M.S., University of Arizona Press, Tucson, pp. 21–38.Google Scholar
di Cicco, D., 1992. The ST-6 Imaging Camera, Sky Tel., 84, 395–401.Google Scholar
Duncan, M.J., Levison, H.F. and Budd, S.M., 1995. The dynamical structure of the Kuiper Belt, in press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gehrels, T., 1984. Observations made with the Spacewatch Camera 0.91-m telescope at Kitt Peak, Minor Planet Circ., No. 9198.Google Scholar
Gehrels, T., Marsden, B.G., McMillan, R.S. and Scotti, J.V., 1986. Astrometry with a scanning CCD, Astron. J., 91, 1242–1243.Google Scholar
Gladman, B., 1995. 1994 TB. Minor Planet Electronic Circ., 1995–M07.Google Scholar
Marsden, B.G., 1991. The computation of orbits in indeterminate and uncertain cases, Astron. J., 102, 1539–1552.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marsden, B.G., 1992. Comments on search programs for near-earth objects. In Observations and physical properties of small solar system bodies (30th Liège Internat. Astrophys. Colloq.), eds., Brahic, A., Gérard, J.-C. and Surdej, J., Université de Liège, pp. 251–252.Google Scholar
Marsden, B.G., 1994a. Asteroid and comet surveys. In Astronomy from Wide-Field Imaging (IAU Symposium No. 161), eds. MacGillivray, H.T., Thomson, E.B., Lasker, B.M., Reid, I. N. Malin, D. F., West, R. M. and Lorenz, H., Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, pp. 385–399.Google Scholar
Marsden, B.G., 1994b. Astrometric observations of minor planets and comets: present and future needs. In Galactic and Solar System Optical Astrometry, eds. Morrison, L.V. and Gilmore, G.F., Cambridge University Press, pp. 263–275.Google Scholar
Marsden, B.G., 1994c. Searches for planets and comets. In Inventory of the solar system (Astron. Soc. Pacific Conference Series), in press.Google Scholar
Marsden, B.G., 1995. Overview of orbits. In International conference on Near-Earth Objects, ed. Remo, J., N.Y. Academy of Sciences, New York, in press.Google Scholar
McCrosky, R.E., 1990. 801 Oak Ridge, Minor Planet Circ., No. 15630.Google Scholar
Morrison, D. et al., 1992. The Spaceguard Survey, NASA, Washington.Google Scholar
Muinonen, K. and Bowell, E., 1992. Orbital uncertainties for earth-crossing asteroids, Bull. Am. Astron. Soc., 24, 942.Google Scholar
Muinonen, K. and Bowell, E., 1993. Asteroid orbit determination using Bayesian probabilities, Icarus, 104, 255–279.Google Scholar
Rabinowitz, D.L., 1991. Detection of earth-approaching asteroids in near real time, Astron. J., 101, 1518–1529.Google Scholar
Scotti, J.V., 1994. Computer aided near earth object detection. In Asteroids, Comets, Meteors 1993 (IAU Symposium No. 160), eds. Milani, A., di Martino, M. and Cellino, A., Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, pp. 17–30.Google Scholar
Shoemaker, E.M. et al., 1995. Report of the near-earth object survey working group, NASA, Washington.Google Scholar
Väisälä, Y., 1939. Eine einfache Methode der Bahnbestimmung, Mitt. Sternw. Univ. Turku No. 1.Google Scholar
Villard, R., 1989. The world's biggest star catalogue, Sky Tel., 78, 583–589.Google Scholar
Williams, G.V., 1991. (878) Mildred, IAU Circ., No. 5275.Google Scholar