Back to TASS meetings page Michael Richmond has provided his detailed technical notes on the informal NEO meeting. I'll add some side comments, maybe he can incorporate them into whatever report he leaves on the TASS Web site. I also have some slides of the participants at the conference: I'll donate a set to the MPC. - Herb
*> *> Brief Report on "Informal NEO Meeting" at CfA, July 27, 1997 *> Michael Richmond *> July 29, 1997 *> *> Let me now run through the notes I took during the presentations: *>these are terse, but will convey a lot of information (I hope). *>I'll let Herb Johnson provide a different view of the meeting, *>which I suspect will focus more on the importance of amateur *>astronomers to the current asteroid research programs.
In some sense, ALL these programs are "amateur" in that they are done as auxiliary to the primary mission of the equipment in question. And, many of the participants themselves are not professional astronomers. No one seems funded directly for looking for asteroids: they get extra $$$$ from looking for satellites, or they are working for costs or from the odd expense grant. It was also noted by the Minor Planet Center that the majority of their participants (people reporting observations) are amateurs; and there is only ONE site in the Southern Hemisphere devoted to follow-up asteroid observations!
*>LINEAR: Stokes
These guys can look pretty deep, and have already reported hundreds of observations. Although they seem to be on a learning curve about the subject in general, they have learned fast! Their setup and computing seems to be straightforward.
The primary mission of the site is to report on satellites to the Air Force. The equipment was designed to look for streaks (fast motion). Funny, NEO's have similar characteristics!
*>MPC: Williams
That's "Minor Planet Center"
*> - MPC has tool of its own: OBSPLANNER provides list of "nearly-numbered" *> asteroids to users *> but MPC lacks computing power to support open WWW server...IMHO they lack computing power due to an insistance on expensive non-PC (non-Mac for that matter) computers. These guys don't have much money, despite the Harvard location, and very little staff.
They make the strong point that, although the "credit" and the "glory" is in discovery, the *important* work of RECOVERY gets little attention. Asteroids MUST be reobserved at intervals of years in order to have their orbits finely determined, otherwise they are "lost" (position errors of tens or hundred of arc seconds). Essentially, the MPC can't afford the extra effort to reward or identify such activities for each asteroid, but they are aware of particular amateurs and organizations that do this work regularly and are thankful for their efforts.
*>Funding discussion: Huebner et al. *> - Huebner is from NASA Headquarters, interacts with funding agencies *> - Congress wants to know "How long will NEO Search Program take?" *> real answer: open-ended, can't give fixed period *> was a mistake to claim (several years ago) that 10 years would suffice
The problem overall, in my observation at the conference, is that Congress wants some kind of sense of what they will get for their money, and how that money can "best" be spent. My sense at the conference was that there were many ways to look for asteroids, and that results to date on both methods and observations were too early to "decide" what the best ways were. Indeed, "best" depends on your goals: not everyone was merely interested in rocks that threatened the Earth, and even those "great minds" disagreed on how to find them, how many there might be, and how LONG it would take. Hard to see a "solid" proposal emerging soon from this situation, not unusual for fundamental research, but tough in the current funding climate.
*>Ted Bowell, Hierarchial Observation Protocol (HOP)
This is a prototype for a Web site, which will automatically offer to observers a number of asteroids to recover (look at to reestablish their orbits), based on inputted characteristics of the observer's site and equipment and interest. It's intended to encourage amateurs in particular. I suggested that they might include a way for amateurs to "qualify" themselves, say with well-known target asteroids and by offering information or even tutorials on technical stuff: I don't think they "got it". The HOP concept is good for those who already know how to use their equipment and whom have an interest in asteroids, IMHO. This is an unfunded program at the moment.
*>Software for finding asteroids interactively: Buie
Some pretty straightforward methods for enhancing human review of visual image data. The methods may be of interest even for non-IDL programs.
*>Bigelow Survey: Larsen *> - hope to get 3-4 nights per dark run *> - project is limited by man power *> group has more telescope time than they can use
Not an unusual occurrance....
*>Aten Survey: Tholen
Essentially he wants to look for stuff lingering in Earth's solar orbit. Most folks are looking where it's darkest and convenient. He makes a good point.
*>TASS: Richmond
Of course we are not currently doing NEO-class searches, but I pointed out at the conference we got our survey on-line fast, with zero funding and zero pre-planning and zero equipment. I think the MPC folks admired this and hope to emulate it or at least encourage it among their colleagues, hence the invitation to TASS.
*>AMOS: Africano
Essentially their game plan is to offer the Air Force a cheaper, smaller system for satellite tracking, so these guys can use the bigger telescope with their same electronics for *asteroid* tracking. Kinda amusing to offer to "help" the Air Force, but this may be a trend in general...
Common points about these programs:
General impressions
My own impression is that somebody with reasonable equipment, a good site, and a decent observating and data reduction plan can make a *very useful* contribution to the asteroid effort. Even if such a person can't make the *discoveries* with a deep, widefield instrument: they can make *recoveries* with a deep narrowfield instrument.
Suggestions were that "it would take a decade before the surveys are sufficiently robust" to be able to offer solid results and predictions, or for surveys to be relied opon to do followup observations. There was a buzz of chit-chat about all this, but no one objected outright.
I'm personally excited about the possibilities for my own work on this. And it's not far from some things that TASS is doing or might do.