Re: [ATM] Amateur Asteroid detection

[Michael Sallman <msallman@pro-ns.net>]

Wes,

I would suggest starting at the IAU Minor Planet Center:
http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/mpc.html

Lots of interesting information there.

I think most imaging software these days has the functionality to 
"blink" images.

I believe the way that it is done is to check the position(s) you get 
from your images against the positions of all known asteroids at that 
time using something like the Minor Planet Checker:
http://scully.cfa.harvard.edu/~cgi/CheckMP

There is almost certainly software available to calculate the orbital 
elements from your observations as well. I don't know if this software 
has that capability or not, but it might be worth a look:
http://www.minorplanetobserver.com/MPOSoftware/MPOSoftware.htm

Good luck,
Mike

ATM_Wes wrote:
> Now that ASTEROID 2007 TU24 has passed by, I was wondering if there's any
> way for an amateur to get involved in finding NEO asteroids.
> If I have an automated telescope with a CCD camera, what do I do? 
> 
> Step 1: set it up to take pictures of the night sky.
> Step 2: Now what???
> 
> Is there a best way to take the pictures? (West to East, exposure times,
> stacked images, etc)
> Do I take multiple pictures of the same area of the sky nightly or is it
> once per night over multiple days? 
> Once I have the pictures how do I tell if I caught an asteroid? I remember
> something about blink comparators, is there a computerized way to do it? 
> Once I have identified a likely candidate, how do I tell if it isn't a
> "known" object? 
> Do I calculate the orbit first and then try to match it to others to see if
> it's known?
> How do I calculate its orbit?
> How do I compare that orbit to the thousands (?) of other objects orbits?
> Once I've identified the orbit, how do I tell if it intersects the Earth's
> orbit and how do you tell that "it might hit in xx number of years"?
> Who do I report a "find" too?
> 
> Is there a FAQ somewhere on the net that has answers to these questions, or
> is there someone on this list that can answer them for me?
> 
> I appreciate anybody's help. Thanks in advance.
> 
> WES
> 
> 
> 
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