Dave Grennan (J41 Raheny) discovers Asteroid 2008 US3

Dave,

Are you studying specific areas of the sky on the basis of a priori assumptions or, perhaps, are you doing all-sky surveys?

For example, I remember reading the technique of a fellow in Australia (Terry Lovejoy) who discovered two comets during a short period of time by doing an all-sky monitor but for a specific portion of the sky (albeit large). What is amusing is that he was using a regular Canon EOS digital camera. I will see if I can find a link to his set-up.

Anthony.

PS. I should have waited a few minutes so as to post his links which I just found. Here you go:

(1) www.pbase.com/image/62723810
(2) www.pbase.com/terrylovejoy/image/76751349
(3) www.pbase.com/terrylovejoy/image/76757007
(4) www.pbase.com/terrylovejoy/image/76757485
(5) www.pbase.com/terrylovejoy/image/62723809

Anthony.

Bigger? Sure! Brighter? Sure! But TM9 has a better atmosphere

Fantastic news Dave. Well done. This truly is amazing.

Congrats Dave!

It's great that we are having a "mines bigger than yours" discussion with regard to asteroids discovered!

Here's to many more discoveries!

ayiomamitis wrote:

Dave,

Are you studying specific areas of the sky on the basis of a priori assumptions or, perhaps, are you doing all-sky surveys?

Good question Anthony, The target areas have to be VERY carefully selected. For example there is no point in searching an area that the big surveys have recently been through. Also areas with high concentrations of main belt asteroids (MBA) are also best to avoid (debatable) as it is just too labour intensive to rule out all the known MBAs in this area. So higher declinations have much less dense populations and are a better bet. Next these type of objects are only bright enough to be captured for a few weeks close to opposition. For example 2008 TM9 is already below mag 20. So by taking all these into account the search area can be very small indeed. If you look at most of the asteroid discoveries around a given time, you will notice the RA is very similar.

The next plan will be to try and locate earlier opposition for these objects. for example by looking back at the online NEAT archive it may be possible to precover these objects and thus add earier oppositions and reduce the time needed for numbering.

There is some *really* good information here;

members.shaw.ca/andrewlowe/strategy.htm