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NEO Grant Recipient Puts New CCD Camera to Good Use


http://planetary.org/news/articlearchive/headlines/1999/headln-061099.html

NEO Grant Recipient Puts New CCD Camera to Good Use
The Planetary Society
June 10, 1999

In May 1999, Frank Zoltowski, an amateur sky observer who received a
Planetary Society Gene Shoemaker Near-Earth Object (NEO) Grant in late 1998.
He demonstrated the value of amateur asteroid and comet tracking programs,
many of which, like Zoltowski's, are single-person operations conducted
using rudimentary telescopes set up in a back yard.

Zoltowski's follow-up observations of asteroid 1999 AN10 from his home in
Woomera, Australia, have enabled researchers at the Minor Planet Center
(MPC) to develop more precise future orbital calculations for the object,
which is expected to pass within 39,000 kilometers (about 24,000 miles) of
Earth in 2027, with the potential for even closer Earth approaches in 2044
and 2046.

The MPC is the clearinghouse for data about minor planets -- asteroids and
comets that travel through our solar system. As part of the International
Astronomical Union's Commission 20, the MPC oversees a network of
professional search programs and amateur sky observers who discover and
track these objects. In the case of 1999 AN10, which is considered a
near-Earth asteroid, particular follow-up tracking is significant in order
to determine if the object poses any future threat to Earth.

Both the MPC and NASA's NEO office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in
Pasadena, California contend that, while Zoltowski's observations have been
integral to establishing more precise initial orbit predictions, AN10
currently poses a very small threat of colliding with Earth.

The near-Earth asteroid was first discovered by the Lincoln Near Earth
Asteroid Research (LINEAR) program, which conducts sky searches using an Air
Force telescope at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. The objects
initial orbital calculations were established by researchers Andrea Milani,
Steven Chesley and Giovanni Valsecchi in Italy. Prior to publication, these
researchers had the MPC confirm their calculations, which set off a series
of alarmist articles that 1999 AN10 was a potential doomsday asteroid.

In fact, researchers still maintain that the chances of the object striking
Earth are extremely low. The MPC announced, "Additional observations during
the next several months will be useful, because there are no other
reasonable observing opportunities until at least 2004."

Paul Chodas at JPL, says on the NEO office website, "We have developed a
theory which successfully predicts the 25 possible [near-Earth] returns [of
1999 AN10] up to 2040. We have also identified six more close approaches
resulting from the cascade of successive returns. Because of this extremely
chaotic behavior, there is no way to predict all possible approaches for
more than a few decades after any close encounter, but the orbit will remain
dangerously close to the orbit of the Earth for about 600 years."

NEO Grant Recipient Plays an Integral Role in Tracking

While lost to the LINEAR program and other professional programs in the
Northern Hemisphere, Frank Zoltowski was asked to track the object's passage
through Southern Hemisphere skies because of his reliable follow-up imaging
record since he began tracking asteroids and comets for the MPC in 1997.

"The object is very faint--with a magnitude of about 20 [the lower the
number the brighter the object]--and it's moving fairly fast," Zoltowski
says. "These two considerations combined make it a very difficult target for
even many professional setups to find. Thanks to the new CCD camera I
obtained with the the Planetary Society Gene Shoemaker grant, along with
observational techniques I've fine-tuned over that last two years, I am able
to routinely get targets this faint."

Zoltowski was one of three recipients of a 1998 Gene Shoemaker NEO grant, a
program established by the Planetary Society in 1997 to help fund amateur
and underfunded professional efforts in discovery and follow-up tracking.
The grant money, which totalled $27,000 (US) in 1998 and went two other NEO
follow-up programs, is made possible by Planetary Society members, whose
voluntary dues and donations help support targeted research and development
programs in a number of areas.

Zoltowski "recovered" 1999 AN10 during two evenings after heated discussion
about the object began hitting the mainstream press in April 1999. Over the
course of two nights, Zoltowski was able to obtain good images of the
object's movement. After taking two frames of the sky where he believed 1999
AN10 to be moving, Zoltowski thought he had found it.

"The third frame confirmed my assumptions of the image on the second frame,
and I got another image to get three observations that first night," he
says. Following the MPCs recommendations that follow-up observations be
attempted on a second night, Zoltowski set up his equipment the following
evening and obtained a second set of observations.

"I guess what makes my recovery of 1999 AN10 interesting is that I had
obtained observations at all, considering the equipment that I have," he
says. "The performance of my new CCD is spectacular. With it I have been
able to get many objects--1999 AN10 included--that I wouldn't have had a
chance of imaging with my old CCD."

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