Willkommen Sie, Andreas,
The observational research I'm involved in is a high ecliptic survey for EKBOs. Also, I am following up some images taken in Australia with the UK 1.2metre Schmidt telescope of "planet suspects" beyond the EK belt.
This is a follow through from Murrays paper on a hypothetical tenth planet.
This is a parallex type approach. ie. images taken 6 months apart The hypothized tenth planet has a motion of between 5 to 8 seconds of arc.
The UK Schmidt images have "planet suspects" at around 21 magnitude. I need to go beyond this to around 22 magnitude. The telescope here at Kingsland is capable of reaching 22.5 magnitude. I will be making an attempt the second half of 2006 of taking a series of images of the suspect fields.
In addition, I am doing a survey for EKBOs at high latitudes. This has already started with a series of mosaics over an average of 4 hour (night) duration. I am finding alot of asteroids. Although this can be a distraction from the main focus of the study, I decided anyway, to send some astrometric positions to the MPC and finally got observatory code J62. If I am lucky to find an EKBO at high latitude then astrometric positions can be sent in to the MPC.
Unfortunately, at this time of year, particularly at my latitude of 54 degrees there is this constant twilight to the north, this has problems for plate solving at faint magnitudes.
Look forward to further discussions with you and others on MPs and observational methodologies.
Eamonn A
  