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Asteroid and Comet Observing

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.

Hundreds of thousands of asteroids have so far been discovered and present rate is currently about 5000 per month!

Current estimates place the total number of asteroids above 1km in diameter to be about 1.4 million. The largest known asteroid has a diameter of around 950km!

This group has documents to help you select known asteroids to observe, and use software to identify them.

Recent group posts

Recent Outburst of Comet 29P/Schwassmann-Wachmann

04 February, 2010

This comet appears to have undergone another massive outburst, this time on 2010 February 2 increasing in brightness by a factor of 30-40.  The object is one of the largest active comets known.  It follows a near-circular path about 6.2 AU from the Sun, i.e. well beyond the orbit of Jupiter.  This is its fourth outburst of a similar magnitude in the past 8 years.  The nucleus of the comet is probably about 50 km in size and its behaviour may be a consequence of its very slow rotation along with the fact that it appears to be rich in carbon monoxide, a very volatile gas.  The outburst was discovered only a few hours after it had begun by amateur astronomer, Faustino Garcia of Asturias, Spain on February 2nd at 23:58 UT during the course of routine monitoring of several comets.  read more »

Student success with asteroid project

18 August, 2009

I have been working with a student from Mechelen Technical School (near Antwerp), Belgium on an asteroid project. The student contacted me about using the "Making Craters " activity as part of year long project for final year of secondary school. He has just submitted his dissertation and has presented it to a judging panel. Here are his experiences  read more »

Making Craters

Group: Asteroid and Comet Observing
23 October, 2008
During this activity you will be simulating the effect of a meteorite impact on the Earth. You can change the physical character of both the meteorite and type of ground that it hits and see what happens. The simulated results will be compared to existing Earth craters at various locations across the globe.

How to Use Astrometrica

Group: Asteroid and Comet Observing
23 October, 2008

Asteroids are impossible to spot in single images so we need to use software to find them. To identify an asteroid, we have to catch it moving. This article will show you how to you a free piece of software called astrometrica to do this.  read more »

How to set up Astrometrica

Group: Asteroid and Comet Observing • Asteroid rotation
21 October, 2008

Astrometrica is a simple to use Windows application which will read in raw telescope data (FITS files) for a set of observations, and check to see if there are any moving objects in them. You can ‘blink’ data files to see the object moving, mark its name if its know about, and even report a new asteroid to the Minor Planets Center.  read more »

How to find asteroids and comets to observe

Group: Asteroid and Comet Observing • Asteroid rotation
25 July, 2008

Asteroids are awkward; they don’t stay in one place!  Not only that, as the Earth rotates, different asteroids are visible from the Earth at different times.  You might therefore think that finding the position of an asteroid in the sky might be a difficult task.  Fortunately, much of the difficult work has already been done by various groups of people, and it is not as difficult as you might imagine finding the co-ordinates of an asteroid in the sky.  You will need to follow these instructions on the same day as your observing session.  read more »

Observing Asteroids, NEOs and Comets

Group: Asteroid and Comet Observing
25 July, 2008

Image easy-to-find asteroids and see their motion against the starry background.

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