New NEO Coming By Soon

We should try to get an image of this!

http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/03/01/208251&from=rss

Matt - Grade Update

Completed Tasks - (Grade):

1. Make list of top ten candidate asteroids and why they're interesting/post on blog - (D-)
2. Take one practice observation of an asteroid/try to get pictures of 1999 AQ10/try every day for a week if necessary - (D)

Simulating the Earth's Orbit

Here's the rough template that will serve as the basis for our Earth-Sun-asteroid orbital computations:

Crider2.py

"Bright" vs "Faint" Asteroids in MPC

The Minor Planet Center has lists of recovery opportunities for bright (V<21) and faint (21custom list.

Spring 2009: Asteroid List

Here is the list I put together of the asteroids to keep an eye on this semester.


List of Interesting Asteroids:
- Toutatis (4179) –
o On September 29, 2004, Toutatis will passed by Earth at a range of four times the distance between the Earth and the Moon, the closest approach of any known asteroid or comet between then and 2060. One consequence of the asteroid's frequent close approaches to Earth is that its trajectory more than several centuries from now cannot be predicted accurately. In fact, of all the Earth-crossing asteroids, the orbit of Toutatis is thought to be one of the most chaotic.
- 1999 AQ10 –
o Will pass 0.0117 AU (4.6 LD) from Earth on February 18th, 2009. Its very close approach to Earth should alter its orbit and make it something interesting to look at/calculate.
- 1994 CC –
o Will pass 0.0170 AU (6.6 LD) from Earth on June 10th, 2009. Its very close approach to Earth should alter its orbit and make it something interesting to look at/calculate.
- Apophis (99942) –
o On Friday, April 13, 2029, Apophis will pass Earth within the orbits of geosynchronous communication satellites. Although its chance of impact has been reduced to a negligible probability, there probably aren’t many more asteroids that more orbital data exists for. This may make it interesting to observe and compare my data with.
- 2007 TU24 –
o Passed closer to Earth last year (1.4 LD) than any asteroid is known to pass Earth until 2027. Its orbit could be of interest because some believe it to be a “rubble pile” asteroid. It could be cool to see how its composition affects its orbit and compares to that of other asteroids.
- 2001 FE90
o Will pass 0.0180 AU (7.0 LD) from Earth on June 28th, 2009. It could be as big as 650 m in diameter.
- 2009 CV
o Will pass 0.0124 AU (64.8 LD) from Earth on February 23th, 2009. It is passing very close to us but is only estimated to be about 90 m in diameter. It may be interesting to look at the orbit of an asteroids of its size, though.
- 1998 OR2
o The largest asteroid that is making a close approach in the near future. It is about 4.4 km in diameter and will miss us by 70 LD on March 12.
- 2003 QO104
o Another very large asteroid (4.2 km diameter( like 1998 OR2, that will miss us by about half the distance (37 LD) on June 9.
- 161989 Cacus
o An asteroid that’s been discovered for some time and should have precise orbital information. It is 2.2 km in diameter, and will miss Earth by 71 LD on March 7.

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