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Near-Earth Asteroid Tracking (NEAT) was a program run by NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, surveying the sky for near-Earth objects. NEAT was conducted from December 1995 until April 2007, at GEODSS on Hawaii, as well as at Palomar Observatory in California. With the discovery of more than 40 thousand minor planets, NEAT has been one of the most successful programs in this field, comparable to the Catalina Sky Survey, LONEOS and Mount Lemmon Survey.
Provisional designation in astronomy is the naming convention applied to astronomical objects immediately following their discovery. The provisional designation is usually superseded by a permanent designation once a reliable orbit has been calculated. In the case of more than 900,000 minor planets, approximately a third remains provisionally designated, as hundreds of thousands have been discovered in the last two decades.
Eric Walter Elst is a Belgian astronomer at the Royal Observatory of Belgium in Uccle and a prolific discoverer of asteroids. The Minor Planet Center ranks him among the top 10 discoverers of minor planets with thousands of discoveries made at ESO's La Silla Observatory in northern Chile and at the Rozhen Observatory in Bulgaria during 1986–2009.
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Lutz Dieter Schmadel was a German astronomer and a prolific discoverer of asteroids, who worked at the Astronomisches Rechen-Institut (ARI) of the University of Heidelberg.
William Kwong Yu Yeung is a Hong Kong-born, Canadian amateur astronomer with telescopes based in the United States.
Wolf Bickel is a German amateur astronomer and a prolific discoverer of asteroids, observing at his private Bergisch Gladbach Observatory, Germany. He is the most successful German discoverer of minor planets.
The Uppsala–DLR Asteroid Survey is an astronomical survey, dedicated for the search and follow–up characterization of asteroids and comets. UDAS puts a special emphasis on near-Earth objects (NEOs) in co-operation and support of global efforts in NEO-research, initiated by the Working Group on Near-Earth Objects of the International Astronomical Union (IAU), and the Spaceguard Foundation. UDAS began regular observations in September 1999, with some test runs during 1998. Discoveries of NEOs are reported to the Minor Planet Center (MPC).
Višnjan Observatory is an astronomical observatory located near the village of Višnjan in Croatia. It is headed by Korado Korlević, a prolific astronomer and discoverer of minor planets. In 2009, the Višnjan observatory moved to Tičan and received the obs. code L01 on 5 October 2017.
The Ondřejov Observatory is the principal observatory of the Astronomical Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. It is located near the village of Ondřejov, 35 kilometres southeast of Prague, Czech Republic. It has a 2-metre wide telescope, which is the largest in the Czech Republic.
Mount Lemmon Survey (MLS) is a part of the Catalina Sky Survey with observatory code G96. MLS uses a 1.52 m (60 in) cassegrain reflector telescope operated by the Steward Observatory at Mount Lemmon Observatory, which is located at 2,791 meters (9,157 ft) in the Santa Catalina Mountains northeast of Tucson, Arizona.
The Pistoia Mountains Astronomical Observatory, also known as the San Marcello Observatory and the Pian dei Termini Observatory, is an astronomical observatory in San Marcello Piteglio, Tuscany, central Italy.
A formal minor planet designation is, in its final form, a number–name combination given to a minor planet. Such designation always features a leading number assigned to a body once its orbital path is sufficiently secured. The formal designation is based on the minor planet's provisional designation, which was previously assigned automatically when it had been observed for the first time. Later on, the provisional part of the formal designation may be replaced with a name. Both formal and provisional designations are overseen by the Minor Planet Center (MPC), a branch of the International Astronomical Union.
A minor planet is an astronomical object in direct orbit around the Sun that is neither a planet nor exclusively classified as a comet. Before 2006, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) officially used the term minor planet, but during that year's meeting it reclassified minor planets and comets into dwarf planets and small Solar System bodies (SSSBs).
References
- ↑ "Minor Planet Discoverers (by number)". Minor Planet Center. 12 January 2017. Retrieved 1 February 2017.
- ↑ "13389 Stacey (1999 AG24)". JPL Small-Body Database Browser. Retrieved 14 December 2010.