Congrats to Kieran Rooney on his first NEO confirmation.

michaeloconnell wrote:

So, in effect, as their apparent motion is so fast, there is little to no chance of any amateur astronomer disovering an NEO.

You are correct that it would be VERY difficult for an amateur to discover a NEO. However two weeks ago thats exactly what happened. A russian amateur, Timur Kryachko was looking for variable stars in corona borealis when he stumbled on an 18th mag NEO with his 12" newtonian. Luckily it was a clear night in Dublin and as his object appeared on the page, I was literally ready to begin. Within an hour his discovery was confirmed. As it turned out it was the very first NEO ever discovered from Russian soil. It is always nice to confirm a NEO but its *really* nice when its an amateur discovery and as you point out these are VERY rare.

When I get a bigger CCD chip I will seriously consider hyperstar. This combo would make a NEO discovery a distinct possibility. It is possible but you really do need something like a reasonably big F/2 scope and a very large CCD. With a setup like that you are now really playing in the 'big boys' territory.

phoenix wrote:

Mr Grennan you owe me some missing hours of sleep .

Ask Carl to tell you a few jokes. That should have you caught up with your lost sleep in no time:)

Actually what Kieran points out highlights an interesting point. How I ended up scaring Kieran was when I looked at Kieran's observations, I neglected to take the parallax constants for J16 into account. For a main belt asteroid the difference between the position for J16 and a geocentric (earthe centred) position would be minimal, but with NEOs when they are very close, parallax makes a big difference. In fact not considering parallax made Kierans observations look like they were 20" off when in fact they were bang on the money.

When observations are received at the MPC, a new orbit is computed using a type of 'best fit'. The actual observations are the compared with the computed positions and the difference is noted. If the difference (residual) is too big (say > 1.5") then the observation may be discarded. Its a bit of a matter of pride to have residuals as small as possible. However if you have a really big residual (like 20" big) you can even get a ticking off by someone at the MPC). It happened to me once!

Fascinating stuff lads. Well done Kieran and to you all.

Everytime the Irish 'J' Club post about Asteroid discoveries, NEO confirmations, Exoplanet transit confirmations etc I can't help but smile and be amazed at the whole idea of it. Amatuers making real and important contributions to science. It truely is a Golden age in Astronomy and a great time to be alive. With such amazing equipment within the financial grasp of amatuers nowadays its like the whole science of astronomy has become a giant world wide distributed computing network like Seti@Home, Folding@home etc The analogy being the large professional observatories are the supercomputers and the 10's of thousands of adequately equipped amatuers being the computer users donating their limited spare processer time. ie expensive to hire a supercomputer for protein folding calculations so why not take advantage of the millions of idling computers worldwide. Instead of using the valuable time of the big observatoris who's time is better spent peering back billions of years into the cosmos, using the resource of amatuers worldwide who are just itching to contribute in a real way to the science of discovery.

Personally, I have a low frustration threshold. As much as I would love to have the resources to do this, as much as I love the idea of confirming an NEO or measuring an exoplanet transit, Irish weather doing its worst would just frustrate me beyond belief. I find it frustrating anough just visual observing when the clouds roll in. I'd be like a demon if the clouds rolled in in the middle of some data aquisition.

The fact that you guys can cope with this and the work you are doing amazes me.

My hats off to Kieron and the rest of the Irish 'J' mob !

Kieran,

Many congrats there bud!

I hate doing this to you guys but I am going to start calling you the "Irish mafia" ... and very successful by the way!

I now know where to turn to in the event I accidently come across something while doing my pretty picture work!

Anthony.

Calibos wrote:

My hats off to Kieron and the rest of the Irish 'J' mob !

Oops, you beat me to it, for I just saw your reference to "mob" ...

Anthony.