Congrats to Kieran Rooney on his first NEO confirmation.

Guys,

Last night Kieran (J16 An Carraig OBservatory) supplied data which resulted in a Near Earth Asteroid (2009 JM2) being confirmed. I think I scared the hell out of Kieran last night when I advised that his observations were off the mark when they turned out to be first class so sorry for scaring you mate!

Anyway the MPEC complete with Kieran's contribution can be seen here;

www.cfa.harvard.edu/mpec/K09/K09J54.html

Thats one to frame and put on the wall of the observatory. May it be the first of many and hopefully it wont be too long before we see a discovery at J16.

Well done and congrats again!

Dave.

Well done Kieran!
I see you get a mention too Dave G! Nice one!

Perhaps you can clarify for the folks here the difference between a discovery & a confirmation and the timeframe involved between the two. Might give people a better appreciation of what this confirmation means and the work that is involved in it.

Michael.

Dave also got confirmation data on 2009 JL2 last night aswell.

Both objects were discovered by the Catalina Sky Survey. In the case of JM 2 the first data from them was at 9.16 UT and my first data was at 21.53UT. At this point there was still not enough data to get accurate residuals which Dave scared me with when he said my residuals were 20 arcseconds. They turned out to be a lot better than that though.

If they had been 20 arcseconds I was going to get rid of the scope and just use a magnifying glass and scale ruler instead.

Mr Grennan you owe me some missing hours of sleep .

Only a matter of hours in it then...could have been your own discovery with a bit if luck.
When did you capture it Dave?

Michael.

michaeloconnell wrote:

Only a matter of hours in it then...could have been your own discovery with a bit if luck.
When did you capture it Dave?

Michael.

Hi Michael, I'll explain how it works. A Near Earth Object (NEO) is treated differently to a main belt asteroid (MBA) as far as discovery is concerned. If you discover an MBA you need to supply two separate nights of data to be given credit for it. With a NEO you supply one night and then you or another observatory supply the second night. Your first nights data is reduced to a very rough orbit to enable observers to recover the object a night later. So in effect you get a steer for the second night. NEOs in need of such confirmation are placed on the NEO confirmation page . You can generate ephemerides here or even download the orbital elements of new finds. At this stage the NEO's are pre-discovery, i.e. they do not have a temporary designation like 2009 JM2. Only when sufficient confirmation data is provided so the MPC give the asteroid a formal designation. So in effect what Kieran and myself were doing last night was following up on discoveries made by others and providing confirmational data so the IAU (Minor Planet Centre) can make the discoveries official (publish them on the MPEC like the one linked above.

NEO's are usually discovered by the big surveys primarily because they move so fast only very large scopes can pick them up and still provide a wide field of view. Some of these can be very difficult to image even when you know where to look due to the speed they move at. For example, this afternoon, 2009 JL2 was moving fast enough to move one moon diameter (30 arcminutes) in 3 minutes (of time). Also you are limited to a very short exposure time so that the object doesn't trail too much This can be as short as 1 or 2 seconds. You then need to stack often hundreds of these short exposures to detect the asteroid. Couple that with the fact that when these things are whizzing by earth, the positional uncertainty can be huge and you can see that some of these are very difficult to measure.

Thanks for taking the time to explain that Dave. I wasn't aware there was a difference between NEOs and MBAs in the way their discovery are handled by the MPC. Very interesting. So, in effect, as their apparent motion is so fast, there is little to no chance of any amateur astronomer disovering an NEO. However, by the sounds of it, to even detect one of these NEOs at such an early stage after discovery and accurately measure it's position is a major feat in itself for any amateur astronomer. It is clear that this work is providing a real contribution to our knowledge and understanding of these objects, which is especially important considering their potetial threat to us all.

Cheers,

Michael.