Near Earth objects (NEOs) are asteroids or comets than are orbiting in our solar system. It is likely at some time that one of the millions of rocks that orbit in our solar system will collide with the Earth. Observations of these asteroids that we take go towards a world wide effort to create a complete database of NEOs so that we might predict if and when asteroids will come into contact with our planet. Our students have been doing great work with imaging NEOs and sending the information they produce to the Minor Planet Center (MPC) where the asteroids are catalogued and their orbits defined.

In November 2006 five students went to the Spaceguard centre in Wales, the UK information center for NEO observing. There they learned how to observe NEOs with one of the worlds leading experts, Jay Tate. They then began our observational work with NEOs and on return students who were trained began to instruct others on how to do the observations as well. Since then students have done many observations of NEOs and gathered much useful information for the MPC and the Asteroid database.

 

Imaging NEOs

To observe Near Earth Objects using the Faulkes Telescope we have to find the exact co-ordinates of the asteroid we intend to observe at the exact time of our observation. This information is mostly gathered from the MPC website. Most the asteroids we observe come from the Spaceguard priorities list which are asteroids that have been designated urgent or necessary for observation; usually asteroids are on this list because there have not been enough observations to exactly define their orbit and there still may be a threat that it could collide with our planet.

Once we have the name of the asteroid that we are going to observe we need to get the co-ordinates for the location of the asteroid at our time of observing. This we can obtain from the MPC Ephemeris service which generates the co-ordinates of the asteroid for the specified time.

When observing asteroids we need to see them moving , we therefore take three images of the asteroids so we can blink them to see them moving, therefore we can labeled them on our images and use the database to position them. An important note when observing the three images is that we have to keep the same co-ordinates for all three images, using the co-ordinates from the first image we took. Therefore when we blink them we can see the asteroid moving across the screen.

We usually use the red light filter on the Faulkes telescope when observing NEOs. The red light filter helps block out much more light from the moon which would make it difficult to see the asteroids in our images due to the glare it would produce.

We process our images using a program called Astrometrica which can identify the stars in our images by cross referencing them to the star database. This then means we can label the asteroid in our image and with the star location have all the information needed to send a report to MPC.

 

Confirmation Page Asteroids

Some asteroids that we observe come from the NEO confirmation page. This is a page generated by the MPC where newly discovered asteroids are posted as they still need to be confirmed by more observations before they are named and entered into the database. Observers of these asteroids are sometimes published in the MPCs reports and it is an achievement for young astronomers to get their name published in a scientific publication. We have observed many of these asteroids since beginning our work and are keen to continue.

Animated Asteroid

The following image, compiled from three staggered exposures, clearly shows the asteroid moving against the background. The asteroid is highlighted.