The 10th March to the 21st April saw UKSEDS’ continued involvement with the Pan-STARRS Asteroid Search campaign. Overall the campaign was a great success with a record 1219 preliminary asteroid discoveries and 274 provisional discoveries being made by fifty-six teams all across the globe. Our own members, Chris Lavis, Owen Roberts and Thomas Goodfellow were responsible for eighteen of those preliminary discoveries, as well as two provisional discoveries, 2013 EA48 and 2013 EM52. After more observations are made of the two asteroids to enable a more precise definition of their orbits, 2013 EA48 and 2013 EM52 will be awarded numbered status and our lucky discoverers will be able to propose a name for their asteroids.
This has been the third asteroid search campaign UKSEDS has participated in and has been our most successful one to date. Here’s hoping our rise in success carries on with future campaigns! For anyone who would like to get involved with an asteroid search campaign, the Space Generation Advisory Council’s (SGAC) Find an Asteroid campaign is just around the corner. You too, like Chris, Owen and Tom, could help find and name your own asteroid! Get in touch at: [email protected].
On behalf of the team, I’d like to thank all those at the International Asteroid Search Collaboration (IASC) for making this happen and say a huge thank-you to Nick Howes for all of his support and technical help. You can find out more about Nick Howes and the impressive work he does by following him on twitter.
More info on how minor planets are named can be found here.
By Ranji Gogoi
No comments yet.