Asteroids, also known as Minor Planets or Planetoids, are a class of astronomical object generally used to describe a diverse group of small bodies that drift around the Solar System in orbit around the Sun.
It is thought that asteroids are the remnants of the protoplanetary disc that formed around the Sun when the Solar System was first created. Most of the small bodies came together and formed the inner, rocky planets that we see today. The rest however, remain in space as rocky debris or space junk. There are different types of asteroid out there, depending on where they are found in the Solar System, these groups include the Trojans, Greeks and Hildas (this last group is particularly strange as they have triangular orbits around the Sun).
Hundreds of thousands of asteroids have so far been discovered and the present rate is currently about 5000 per month! The largest known asteroid has a diameter of around 950km (compare that to the one scientists believe destroyed Dinosaurs which was a measley 10 km)! The mass of the Asteroid Belt (the dense belt of asteroids between Mars and Jupiter) is equal to about 4% of the mass of our Moon. So asteroids make up a significant proportion of our Solar System and are very important objects.
In recent years, the interest in identifying asteroids has grown quite considerably - many asteroids have been found with Earth-crossing orbits that, given enough time, could collide with Earth.
The procedure for finding new asteroids is fairly straight forward. Any body in orbit around the Sun will appear to move slightly between two observing frames taken a time apart against the starry background (which does not move). This is what you will learn to do during this project.
Once you have downloaded Astrometrica, you can find asteroids to observe by using the Observing Asteroids and Comets group . Alternatively you can search through the archive for data which already exists. Once you have your files you can open them in Astrometrica and search for the asteroid.
