Congrats to Dave McDonald (309914) 2009 FM14

Wel done Dave! What are you gonna call it?

Seanie.

keep this up ya will have enough to build a whole planet :laugh:

well done

DECLAN

Well done Dave it's about time.

Thanks for all the kind words folks.

I guess that any confirmed asteroid discovery is ultimately going to be numbered. So for both asteroids, it was simply a waiting game. Luckily, given our recent weather, others managed to observe 2009FM14 and pushed it into the numbered list.

The only thing that worried me (and Dave Grennan) was that MPC rules were changed recently in such a way that there was possibilty we could lose our discovery credits (and therefore naming).

Anyhow, turns out both are now numbered and credited. So I have two asteroids that I get first shot at naming. I know what I'd like the first one to be called. But I'm not sure about the second one. I have some ideas but if anyone else out there has any suggestions, I'm all ears...

e.g.
CelticTiger
CelticTiger (1996 - circa 2007) was responsible for many a purchase of SCT's, Dobs, Apos and other atronomical paraphernalia in Ireland.


Dave

dmcdona wrote: The only thing that worried me (and Dave Grennan) was that MPC rules were changed recently in such a way that there was possibilty we could lose our discovery credits (and therefore naming).

Out of interest what were the changes? It would seem strange to remove credit for a discovery.

Congratulations by the way!

albertw wrote: Out of interest what were the changes? It would seem strange to remove credit for a discovery.

When a discovery is made, the MPC run a routine to look at the new object in the context of previously submitted one night only observations (remember you need two nights for a discovery). Almost always a new object is linked with a previous 'One Night Stand'. Actually most often it is more than one. The rule change is that if the MPC find two earlier obervations in the same opposition by the same station code, discovery credit is awarded to that station, even if the observations were so far apart that they did not initially qualify for a discovery designation. A bit wrong imo since the early reporting station had no idea that the two nights were of the same object. Another fear is that your asteroid gets linked to a known object whose orbit is so loose that initially the MPC do not link the two but as more observations of the two objects arrive, the orbital solutions converge until a point comes where they are proved to be the same object. Point in question was my '3rd discovery' 2009 EN1 was initially thought to be a new object. After a couple of months the solution converged with 2003 SL431. Of course in this scenario the earlier designation gets the credit (rightly), So when this object got numbered and became (259516) 2003 SL431 the credit goes to the sloan sky survey.