Congrats to Dave McDonald (309914) 2009 FM14

This was from the MPC earlier in the year

"Henceforth, the Minor Planet Center will no longer give preferential treatment to objects observed on two separate nights and submitted properly linked by the discoverer. The MPC recommends that all unidentified objects be reported on a nightly basis. The MPC’s survey processing software, which operates principally on data sent from the large-scale NASA-funded surveys, will now be the only designation processing pipeline for observations arriving at the MPC. While this move will save the MPC staff considerable time in processing incoming batches, one consequence of this action will be a dramatic reduction in the number of discoveries assigned to so-called ”amateur” observing stations. During the past several years, these amateur discoveries were sometimes processed days before survey batches from the same dates, giving the illusion that the direct amateur contribution to discovery of main-belt minor planets was higher than it actually is. With the change in place it is expected that the number of amateur-station discoveries of minor planets will be reduced drastically."

I can't easily get my hands on the actual rules but the above paraphrases them. I understand that any "discoveries" prior to August 2010 (approx?) were "grandfathered" and the old rules applied.

I'm now joint 689th on the list of Minor Planet Discoverers... FWIW: www.minorplanetcenter.net/iau/lists/MPDiscsNum.html

Congratulations, fantastic news.

Many congrats Dave,
especially so when you consider the weather you're up against in this country !

Dave,

My congrats as well. It takes a very dedicated individual to withstand the frigid cold during winter to pursue such work.

Anthony.

Congrats Dave. Super effort

I realise this prob a bit late but i haven't been on here in ages, i ave been fairly snowed under with emails and other website stuff.

I wanted to say deepest congratulations to you Dave. It must be so difficult for you guys given our climate but yet you continue to succeed and excel. Hats off. Top notch.

All the best,

Brendan