Observations of small Solar System bodies

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Cumulative number of
astrometric observations (in millions) stored in the Minor Planet Center's database per last reported month of each year since 1995. As of December 2019, the database contains 246,034,463 records, 99.5% of which are observations of minor planets.[1]

Observations of

brightness and timestamp of an observed object, besides additional information. The database contains more than 200 million records gathered over the past two centuries.[2]

The MPC assigns a 3 digit

Minor Planet Circulars. Over time, the number of astronomical observatories worldwide has been growing constantly and contains 2468 observatory codes as of November 2023.[3]

On

numbering, often years later, the MPC determines the discovery among all the reported observations for an object. This does not need to be the earliest dated observation, also see precovery. The date of the selected observation will become the object's discovery date, and the corresponding observing astronomer or facility will become its discoverer.[4] The discovery circumstances are given in the catalog of numbered minor planets
.

Observational record

An

Minor Planet Circulars several times a year.[5]

Examples

Date (UT) J2000 RA J2000 Dec Magn Location Ref
1980‑03‑21.59633 13h 51m 40.18s −02° 46′ 38.6″
-
 260 - Siding Spring Observatory-DSS
MPS
 #15065

The example shows the first observational record for the Jupiter trojan

Minor Planets and Comets Supplement (MPS) on the continual page number 15065 on 21 June 2000.[5][6]

Astrometric database

MPC's astrometric database contains more than 200 millions entries, split up into 199.9 million minor-planet observations as well as 0.4 million comet- and 0.6 million satellite-observations.[1]

The ceremonial first entry, by date, is the discovery observation of Ceres made by G. Piazzi on 1 January 1801.

Before the end of the 1950s, records were published in a variety of (non-MPC) journals:

Journals formerly publishing observations
APO Annales de l'Observatoire de Paris: Observations
AN Astronomische Nachrichten
RM
Memoirs of the Royal Astronomical Society
HD Mitteilungen der Landessternwarte Heidelberg

Discovery

Main article: List of minor planet discoverers

Among the observations of an object, one will be determined by the MPC as the discovering observation and its timestamp as the discovery date. This typically happens years after the first observations when an object is numbered and additional observation have secured the object's orbit sufficiently. While the discovery date is typically defined by the object's first obtained observation, there are many exceptions, as the rules for discovery are intricate and have changed over time.[4] For example, an object needs to be observed several times over (at least) two consecutive nights. As nowadays most discoveries are made by dedicated surveys and observing facilities, and the MPC typically does not give credit to more than three individual astronomers, most discoveries of minor planets are credited to a facility (identified by its observatory code) rather than to individual astronomers.

See also

References

  1. ^ a b "Orbits and names". Minor Planet Statistics. Minor Planet Center. Retrieved 13 January 2020.
  2. ^ "Running tallies". Minor Planet Center. Retrieved 19 January 2019.
  3. ^ "List of Observatory Codes". Minor Planet Center. Retrieved 13 January 2020.
  4. ^ a b "Editorial notice". Minor Planet Center. 19 October 2010. MPEC 2010-U20. Retrieved 20 January 2019.
  5. ^ a b "MPC / MPO / MPS archive". Minor Planet Center. Retrieved 21 January 2019.
  6. ^ a b "(21271) 1996 RF33". Minor Planet Center. Retrieved 21 January 2019.

External links

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