Re: [ATM] Amateur Asteroid detection

[Adam Krause <krausea34@yahoo.com>]

Wes,

There is some software that I can recommend to you.  One is Astrometrica, which is freeware that can be used to find asteroids.  It is used by Dr. Durig from the University of the South in Sewanee, TN in their search for asteroids.  It compares your pictures to an online database of known asteroids and stars.

Another program is FindOrb, which can determine the orbital elements of an asteroid or comet based on obervations and times of observations.  Here are some links to the web pages:

http://www.astrometrica.at/
http://www.projectpluto.com/find_orb.htm

Happy hunting!

-Adam Krause


----- Original Message ----
From: ATM_Wes <atm_wes@sbcglobal.net>
To: atm@atmlist.net
Sent: Wednesday, January 30, 2008 12:59:02 PM
Subject: [ATM] Amateur Asteroid detection

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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