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