EURONEAR- The First 100 NEA's Observed

Tudorica, Alex; Toma, R.; Sonka, A. B.; Nedelcu, A. D.; Birlan, M.; Vaduvescu, O.; EURONEAR Team
Bibliographical reference

American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #40, #27.09; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 41, p.557

Advertised on:
1
2009
Number of authors
7
IAC number of authors
0
Citations
1
Refereed citations
1
Description
The European Near Earth Asteroids Research (EURONEAR) is a project which envisions to establish a coordinated network to follow-up, recover and discover Near Earth Asteroids (NEAs), Potentialy Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs) and Virtual Impactors (VIs). Within this network, more than 100 objects have been observed during the first two years using 1m class telescopes in about 10 observing runs in visiting mode taking place in France (Pic du Midi 1m telescope and Haute Provence 1.2m), Chile (La Silla 1m and 2.2m telescope, Cerro Tololo 1m, Cerro Campanas 1m and Cerro Armazones 0.84m) and Romania (Bucharest, using a small 0.3m telescope). About 1000 astrometric positions of VIs, PHAs and NEAs and their photometry have been reported promptly to Minor Planet Center and included in NEODyS database, contributing to the recovery of new objects and improvement of the orbits. Additional to NEAs, about 500 known Main Belt Asteroids (MBAs) were measured recently in the WFI field of the ESO/MPG 2.2m telescope in three nights, while more than 100 other MBAs have been discovered (subject to increase in time) by a team of nine people working in a distributed network which included professionals, students and amateur astronomers.