MPC Site Review

The Near Earth Object Confirmation Page is the first section I looked at. It might provide a direction I could take with my project. The names of objects that have not yet been conclusively identified as asteroids are given. Some data/pictures exist for these objects, but more is needed before they can properly designated as asteroids or something else. What's cool is below their names, the site has a data generator like HORIZONS. You fill in your viewing information, and I believe the site will generate an ephemeris for you. I could potentially use this information to tell PROMPT where to point. It would be cool to be the one who submits the data to the MPC that confirms that one of these objects is indeed an asteroid.

I also looked at the form for submitting observations to the MPC and tried to make sense of it. The format itself is kind of confusing. I was able to figure out exactly what pieces of information I need though. I need to know the asteroid's minor planet number, its provisional designation or temporary designation, whether it is newly discovered, a character program code (I don't understand this), how the observation was made (CCD for me), the date of the observation, the observed RA and Dec of the object, the object's observed magnitude and band, and finally the observatory code (807 for PROMPT). I am confident that I either know how to obtain or could learn how to get all this information. I think I am going to add to my list of my goals for this semester to gain an understanding of the format for sending in data to the MPC.

This Semester's Goals

Dr. Crider and I tentatively planned out what we hoped to get accomplished over the next two years on our first meeting of the semester. These are the goals we came up with for this semester (Fall 2008):
1. Present at Society of Physics Students Meeting
2. Conduct a literature review
3. Document software pipeline
4. Identify an appropriate professional conference to present at

One of my tasks was to flesh out my project and its direction. I came up with some more ideas of things that I should work on this semester:
- Present a poster for my College Fellows Project during reading day
- Write a section of my thesis for the research I did over the summer before I forget it
- Come up with candidate research questions and start to narrow them down
- Discern which journals/publications are most useful to me (figure out the best places to look for the latest information)
- Understand the format for sending in data to the MPC

Day #23

This week I've just been processing all of the data I have amassed. I got some really great pictures of 2008 BT18. My first set of these had an exposure length of 40 seconds so they looked like dashes on the frame. I then got some more with an exposure length of only 2.5 seconds. I took all these from the same telescope position. They make a great movie showing the spherical asteroid travel across space over eleven pictures. Overall, my spreadsheets have turned out well. Most of my data seems to be within the uncertainty bounds given by HORIZONS. In several cases though, my data seems to be consistently about half an arcsecond greater than HORIZONS. I'm not sure the cause of this discrepancy. It could possibly be the altitude of PROMPT.

Day #22

The past few days I've been analyzing the data I was able to get from Maxim DL. Since I now have the positions of 2008 LG2 in my photos, I have something to compare with the HORIZONS database. Therefore, I told HORIZONS to generate me an ephimeris for 2008 LG2 at the time (down to the minute) the pictures were taken. Right now, I am in the process of plotting the values HORIZONS generates with those I have taken from my pictures. This involves a lot of Excel work and conversions, so its keeping me busy. From what I am starting to see now, my RA's are almost exactly the same. My declination coordinates seem to stray from the HORIZONS data at two places. I might need to go back and make sure I got the best coordinate value from my pictures at those two points.

Day #21

Today was a great day. When Dr. Crider and I were working yesterday with Starry Night, I noticed that a few of the stars it identified could be found in the USNO catalogue but not necessarily the default GSC one. Today I got on Maxim DL, went to its astrometry function, and changed the catalogue to USNO (and the path location). It then solved all my 2008 LG2 pictures within two minutes. Therefore, I am now able to get a fairly accurate value for the asteroid's position in my pictures. This issue had held me up for close to two weeks, so I am very happy to finally get it resolved and move on.

Day #20

Maxim DL is very frustrating. Like I said in my last post, it did finally give me the coordinates for my first telescope position. I have since tried many of the other positions with no success. It often takes over an hour to process the request before it tells me it was unable to match the stars. Sometimes, it never gives me any message. It just seems to freeze. What I'm left with is two sets of coordinates, one for my first position and one for my last. I guess if I had to pick any two, these would be them. I'm going to get out a ruler and try to find the other coordinates manually. I'll make a scale using the values I do have that will hopefully enable me to estimate the ones I don't have. This obviously won't be extremely accurate but I can think of no other method to turn to.

Day #19

Using Maxim DL, I was able to get the coordinates of my asteroid at its first telescope position with the "PinPoint astrometry" feature. This is encouraging because I had all but concluded that Maxim DL would only do this for the final position. However, it takes Maxim DL a very long time to do this. It must have worked for forty minutes searching through the star catalogue before it finally solved the image. I set it to work on the second position, but after about an hour, it still had not been able to work its astrometry. I left it going, so hopefully it will work at some point. If I can get it to work for all my telescope positions, then I'll have what I really need. This is what I'm currently working on. It is a very slow process.

Day #18

PROMPT took most of the pictures (intended for 1999 VU). I can't seem to make out anything that looks like an asteroid in any of them, however. I'm starting to wonder how accurate I could be if I took out a ruler and tried to make a scale for the good pictures I have for 2008 LG2. I think I could get a fairly accurate estimate of the coordinates of the asteroid. I think I will get to work on doing this tomorrow. Then I'll have something tangible to compare with NASA's data and come closer to obtaining my overall goal. I'll keep telling PROMPT to take more pictures but will focus mainly on analyzing the ones I already have.

Day #17

Regardless of what catalogue I use, PinPoint will not work the astrometry for nine of my eleven 2008 LG2 pictures. This makes no sense because the same stars that are present in the final two shots are there in the others as well. This is a major disappointment. I'm not sure what else I can try to do with those pictures, my only decent shots of something dim. A quite larger asteroid, 1999 VU is flying close to earth tonight. The PROMPT website is telling me that it won't have great visibility of it, but I may as well give it a shot anyway. There are some very good prospects coming up, but most of them will only be visible from the Northern Hemisphere. This is discouraging as well. I guess I'll just continue trying to get some shots of the few asteroids I should be able to see, although the majority of those are extremely small and/or far away.

Day #16

Today was kind of a slow day. I got back some color pictures of 2005 WC. However, after a great deal of effort, I could not seem to find anything in any of them that even closely resembled the asteroid I was looking for. They were all very blurry. I'm not sure exactly what caused this. I've got a hunch it was because the pictures must have been taken fairly close to the horizon. Its really annoying that PinPoint won't work the astrometry for most of my 2008 LG2 pictures. I was able to get the RA and Dec for the last telescope position shots, but not for any of the others. I am yet to try searching them using different catalogues, so I'll definitely be doing that in the near future. The biggest asteroid to fly by the earth during my time doing this project will pass by tomorrow night. Sadly, it looks like it won't be visible to PROMPT's telescopes.

Day #15

Once again, PROMPT did not take my pictures of 2005 WC. I guess maybe my luck with getting my pictures taken has run out. I'll try one last time on this asteroid tonight. If I don't get anything back, I think it will be time to switch targets. Dr. Crider and I printed out all my 2008 LG2 pictures today. We were impressed to see how well they matched up and really exhibited the blazing speed of the asteroid. Hopefully I can figure out a good way I could present them to a group of people whether through a camera or some other means. An asteroid twice the size of 2008 LG2 is set to make its earth flyby in a few days so I'm getting excited for that. Right now, I'm mainly trying to figure out the positional coordinates of 2008 LG2 on my pictures. I should also not that, when putting RA and Dec values into Maxim DL, using colons between the hour, minute, second (degree, arcminute, arcsecond) values does not work. Rather, it requires that you just put spaces in between them.

Day #14

PROMPT didn't take any of my color filter pictures of 2005 WC last night. I've got a feeling a lot more people are trying to use PROMPT 5 which seems to be the only scope that takes U,B,V filter pictures. I'll try to get those pictures again tonight and also told the other scopes to take open filter ones. Even if I can't get color pictures back, having anything of 2005 WC would be helpful. It would enable me to compare them to my pictures of 2008 LG2. This could help me gauge how the size and distance of a dim asteroid affect how it looks in the pictures. I've been trying to get an estimate of just how bright 2008 LG2 is in my pictures. Although PinPoint won't indicate the flux of what I think to be the dim asteroid, it will tell me the flux of other stars in the pictures. I need to devise a way to figure the brightness of the asteroid using the information I have for those stars.

Day #13

I'm fairly sure I have some pictures of a dim asteroid. I posted some pictures of 2008 LG2 awhile back. At that time, I only knew how to use PinPoint to stream pictures together in a "movie". Since PinPoint could only solve two of my original pictures, my earlier movie only consisted of those two pictures. I recently learned how to use Maxim DL to "animate" pictures in a movie. With this, I am able to shuffle quickly through all 11 of the picture I got. My pictures were taken from 5 different camera locations and I repeated each shot twice. On one of my locations, I only got one picture back. Therefore, when I animate my pictures, I get four seemingly different movies (with the one picture left over). In each of these two picture movies, I can see a blurry object move from right to left across the frame. I'm fairly certain this has to be 2008 LG2, a dim asteroid. Now that I have this, I need to find its magnitude and other values. This should be a good start to actually analyzing some of my pictures. I also told PROMPT to take pictures of another flyby tonight, 2005 WC. This dim asteroid is slightly larger than 2008 LG2 but much further away. I think the chances of me getting back anything useful from this are probably a longshot, but the goal of my project is to test PROMPT's limits, so who knows.

Day #12

Today I got some good pictures back of the background of star's behind Ursula in the location where my first set was taken. I took these all with the "V" filter. If I'm not mistaken there is a way to add color to these pictures, but I'm not sure how. When I did this before, I used pictures from "G","V", and "B" filters and then combined them. I'm not sure what to do with only one of these components. A few of these background pictures appear to have some dim but visible bodies in them. These interest me, and I'll be using PinPoint and/or Starry Night to try and figure out what they could be. I've got a lot of good pictures of Ursula, a bright asteroid, but I'm not sure how to begin the task of finding a dim one. For the time being, I'm experimenting with different things on my programs and reading a little of the asteroid book. Hopefully Dr. Crider and I can devise a new approach when he returns on Monday.

Day #11

My pictures got bumped last night. Dr. Crider and I decided it would just be best to work with what I have for awhile because taking new pictures doesn't seem to be yielding anything useful. Probably my best set of pictures thus far is Ursula. I have twenty four images that display the asteroid moving across a fairly significant portion of the frame. If nothing else, these pictures have the "cool" factor needed to impress those outside the field. I plan to continue the process of trying to find the dimmest object detactable by PROMPT. Hopefully by stacking pictures I should be able to make out some dim stars and perhaps even dim asteroids that aren't visible in any one frame. Hopefully I'll also be able to get some color filter pictures of the area where Ursula was in my early shots so perhaps I can add some color to my asteroid movie.

Day #10

Today was another disappointment. There is something very bright in all my ixion pictures and it makes anything dim that would otherwise be visible impossible to see. I think its probably the moon but can't tell for sure. When I checked in Starry Night, it does indeed appear as if ixion passed fairly close to the moon during the time the pictures were shot. For the time being, it doesn't look like there are going to be many fly-by's happening soon. Therefore, I will try a different approach. Instead of solely searching for dim asteroids, I'm going to try and find dim stars by stacking my images. Although this doesn't involve asteroids, it should still allow me to estimate the magnitudes of the dimmest objects PROMPT can see. This should then be useful as it will tell me which dim asteroids I might actually have success in finding. On a side note, I told PROMPT to take pictures of another very small fly-by but am not too optimistic about this yielding anything useful.

Day #9

Today was somewhat disappointing. PROMPT took the thirty pictures of 2008 LG2 I requested and I was able to load them all into PinPoint, but I can't see anything that looks like an asteroid in any of them. I don't understand why this is the case. Although it is possible the asteroid could have moved out of the frame during the latter pictures, the scope should have been centered on it at least during the first few. The calibration files for pictures were also baffling. They seemed to only add more noise to the pictures. On a more positive note, I finally found an asteroid in Starry Night's database that is both large and dim, Ixion. Ixion has an apparent magnitude of 20 and a diameter of about 1 km. This should be a good specimen. It is already contained in PROMPT's database as well, so I can be assured that I'm not making any errors in putting in its correct coordinates. Hopefully I'll get some nice pictures back in the morning that I can use.

Day #8 Screens

2008 LG2:

Day #8

I got perhaps my first pictures of a dim asteroid today. PROMPT took eleven of the twelve pictures I requested of 2008 LG2 (or at least of the location where I thought it should be). I was disappointed to find out that, after loading the pictures into PinPoint, it would only blink two of them. However, in these two pictures, which were taken five minutes apart from one another, I can make out a faint grey dash that seems to move across the frame. This grey dash is present in the other pictures as well but, for whatever reason, PinPoint won't read them. I'm fairly certain what I have are pictures containing a faint asteroid, however. I told PROMPT to take more pictures of this asteroid just from one set of starting coordinates. I'm hoping this will enable me to make out more of the asteroid's (or what I think to be the asteroid) motion. The asteroid made its closest flyby to earth last night, but I'm thinking it should definitely still be visible tonight as well. I also attempted to get some pictures of "quaoar", an asteroid in PROMPT's database taken last night. I got the pictures back, but when I load them into PinPoint, neither the program nor I can detect anything that moves like an asteroid. I'll post two screens of the two pictures PinPoint would read and try to make where I think the 2008 LG2 is.

Day #7

PROMPT actually gave me back some of my very own pictures today. It took 24, 60 second exposures of Ursula. I was able to load the pictures into PinPoint and identify the moving asteroid. However, for whatever reason, PinPoint does not zone in on the asteroid with its crosshairs like it did for Vesta. I'm not sure why. There is no error message, and it is easy to tell which object is moving. I don't know what the deal is with that, but I don't think its all that important. At the very least, I can at least now say that I took some pictures of an asteroid with PROMPT and I've got a 24-exposure movie to prove it. The next step will be to try and catch some dim asteroids. I at first tried using Starry Night to identify a few. From what I can tell, all the asteroid's in starry night's database are either bright or well-known because, when I type their names into Skynet, it already knowns their coordinates. Therefore, I turned to the JPL NEO website. I found that there should be a small asteroid passing relatively close to us (compared to the others on the list) tonight. I used HORIZONS to find its coordinates from 03:00 to 04:00 GMT and manually inputted 6 different commands into PROMPT. I won't know how this works out til tomorrow, but it would be very cool if I can get some good pictures.

Day 6's Screens

Mystery Star (labeled "M 45 Cool Kids" in Skynet):

The Ghost of Jupiter Nebula (better version):

Day #6

Today was very similar to yesterday. I'm not sure whether or not PROMPT took my pictures last night or not. Skynet just says they are "pending". At this point, I'm not sure what "pending" means. Maybe it means PROMPT actually took the pictures, but they're just not available for me to view yet. Maybe my request was bumped. I'm not sure. Either way, I told PROMPT to take pictures of Ursula again tonight, so I guess I'll see if I get anything different tomorrow. I am now able to utilize more of Maxim DL's tools (after Dr. Crider showed me), so my picture imaging abilities are improving. The "stretch screen" function seems to make a lot of difference. Today I brushed up on using PinPoint a little. The main problem I ran into seems was in getting WSC data assigned to the files, so I can then search them for asteroids. I guess a lot of the asteroid pictures in PROMPT's database just don't have any stars included in the catalogue. I really hope PROMPT will give me back some of my own pictures soon, so I can start working with those. I'll post some of my new Maxim DL screens in a minute.

Day 5; Part 2

As promised, here are some screens from today.
SATURN:

THE GHOST OF JUPITER:

THE EAGLE NEBULA:

Day #5

The majority of today was spent reading through all the tutorials of Maxim DL and experimenting with its capabilities. I took several sets of photos (of objects I found interesting) from Skynet, loaded them into Maxim DL, and practiced with them. This meant I had to get the right calibration files from Skynet. This was somewhat difficult as I had to find the calibration pictures taken with the right telescopes, at the right times, through the right filters. Once I had these, I used Maxim DL to calibrate the images. This removed a lot of noise for some of my pictures, but it seemed to actually add some unwanted effects to others. For the pictures taken through the GBV filters, I then used Maxim DL to combine their colors. I also toyed around with the "starry night" program and perused this website I will likely be using in the future: http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/iau/mpc.html. I will soon post some of my best screens from my experimentation with Maxim DL.

Day #4

Today marked my first attempt at actually requesting PROMPT to take some pictures. I determined that the large asteroid Ursula would be the best candidate for my first pictures. It is one of the largest and most well-known asteroids and was discovered over a century ago. Hopefully I can get some pictures back, so I can practice using Maxim DL with my own images. I'm still having trouble finding how I can contact Kevin Ivarsen and hopefully get some advice on the best time/position to find dimmer asteroids. I spent the remainder of the day practicing using Maxim DL to align some of the images on SkyNet. I will need to master the process of calibrating groups of images and removing all the noise. There are two main types of noise: DARK and FLAT.

Day #3; Part 2

Here's some screens of Day 3's plots:

Day #3

I finished the process of comparing my data with Horizon's database today. The two sets of data seemed to match up fairly well. The RA's from the two sources definitely were more consistent than the Dec's though. There were a few errors in my process. Although my Dec's were negative, I plotted them as positive in an attempt to make my data match up better with George's. This was not needed and could cause someone reviewing my data to misinterpret it. My excel skills are still lacking as well. I should learn to input my formulae directly into the spreadsheet instead of making calculations by hand. I was able to do so today because I was only dealing with six data points. I'm sure my future observations will involve a ton more points. I also have no clue how to get appropriate error bars on my plots. I've been looking unsuccessfully for Ivarsen's email address. He can hopefully inform me how I can get the best pictures of dim asteroids.

Day #2

Today I was able to utilize PinPoint to accomplish some of my tasks. I spent the morning solving some of George's Russell pictures and found the asteroid in them. I was able to compare my RA/Dec values for Russell with those of NASA (George had the NASA info for Russell in a spreadsheet already) and found the two sets to be very close to one another. After lunch, I started from scratch with the asteroid Vesta. This time, I took all the data save for the PROMPT photos themselves. During this process, I learned how to use the JPL Horizons tool. When I used PinPoint to find Vesta, I found it was hard to get its exact coordinates. Vesta appeared very large in the photos and PinPoint could assign one single set of coordinates to it. Tomorrow's goal will be to model Vesta's movement to make the best estimate of its exact coordinates.

Day #1; Part 2

This is the error I kept getting for the majority of Day #1. Although I originally thought this error was due to some mistake in my entry for the star catalogue, Dr. Crider and I eventually figured out PinPoint only allows "Power Users" to use its primary functions. After Dr. Crider gave me the requisite privileges, I was able to use PinPoint as intended.

Day #1

I spent the bulk of today trying to acquaint myself with the software I will be using during the next two months. The two programs I use are called Maxim DL and Visual PinPoint. Each of them gave me problems. I attempted to calibrate a set of photos George took of the asteroid Russel. I kept getting this error telling me I had not specificied the exposure duration but I could not find the place for this value for the life of me. PinPoint also gave me issues, but I can't really isolate exactly what they are because the program just completely crashes on me when I tell it to "Solve Plates." After these failures, I spent the rest of my time browsing NASA's NEO website. I feel like I have a good grasp on the site's content. It should be a very useful tool, as it contains information about all the asteroids that will be approaching earth in the near future.