Professional Asteroid Search Projects
Dedicated Asteroid Projects:
- Spacewatch - Robert McMillan. Research Professor at Lunar & Planetary Laboratory. Original asteroid search project. Min instruments are 1.8-m and 0.9-m telescopes at Kitt Peak.
http://spacewatch.lpl.arizona.edu/ - Near-Earth Asteroid Tracking (NEAT)—Elinor Helin. At JPL. Operations at two sites: Palomar & Haleakla
http://neat.jpl.nasa.gov/ - Lowell Near-Earth Object survey (LONEOS)
http://asteroid.lowell.edu/asteroid/loneos/loneos.html - Lincoln Laboratory’s Near-Earth Asteroid Search (LINEAR)
http://www.ll.mit.edu/LINEAR/ - Catalina Sky Survey—Steve Larson. Research professor at Lunar & Planetary Laboratory. One of half-dozen prominent asteroid search projects nationwide. Main instruments are 0.76-m Schmidt on Mt. Bigelow, and 1-m telescope in Siding springs, Austl.
http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/css/ - Bisei Spaceguard, Japan
http://www.spaceguard.or.jp/BSGC/eng/ - Pan-STARRS—NEO search project at University of Hawaii. Building four 1.8-m telescopes. First light for first telescope early 2006. forerunner to LSST.
http://pan-starrs.ifa.hawaii.edu/public/home.html - Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Archive—Zelko Ivezic, University of Washington. Astronomer working on asteroid discovery and classification using SDSS data. Has authored or co-authored main papers on SDSS asteroid science results.
http://www.sdss.org/ - Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST)
http://www.lsst.org/lsst_home.html
General Astronomy Projects that Include Asteroids
- Astronomical Research Institute—Bob Holmes. Advanced amateur astronomer who built and runs Antares Observatory near Charleston, IL. Provides data and guidance for teachers and students working on asteroid and supernova search programs. Primary telescopes are 16" and 32".
http://astro-research.org/ - ESSENCE project—Chris Smith, CTIO/NOAO. Supernova project provids images to HOU asteroid project.
http://www.ctio.noao.edu/~wsne/ - GNAT project—Eric Craine. Global Network of small meter-class telescopes used to demonstrate science capabilities of these small scopes.
http://www.gnat.org/index.php