From telescope to MPC: Organizing the minor planets

Abstract

Somewhat more than a century after its introduction for the purpose of discovering minor planets, photography is now rapidly giving way to the CCD as the technology of choice for observing these bodies. A CCD has been used in scanning mode in the University of Arizona's ‘Spacewatch’ program for the discovery of minor planets since as long ago as 1984 (Gehrels 1984, Gehrels et al. 1986), while a CCD in stare mode was first applied as a matter of routine to an established observing program for astrometric follow-up in 1989—that at the Oak Ridge Observatory in Massachusetts (McCrosky 1990). After its initial 1984–1986 success, Spacewatch was modified with the help of a larger CCD and improved computer software and with the adoption of the particular mission of searching for NEOs, or minor planets (and comets) that pass close to the earth (Rabinowitz 1991, Scotti 1994). The Oak Ridge program utilizes a 1.5-m reflector, and the first CCD observations were reduced using the Astrographic Catalogue, the mainstay of the Oak Ridge photographic program back to its inauguration in 1972, as well as of other older photographic programs in which the fields observed were significantly less than 1° across. Within months, the availability, on CD-ROMs, of the STScI Guide Star Catalogue (Villard 1989) effectively consigned the venerable AC to the scrap-heap, and the rapid development of ready-made and relatively inexpensive CCD systems (e.g., di Cicco 1992) has recently increased the volume of CCD astrometry considerably, allowing it to be conveniently and reliably carried out, even by amateur astronomers. At the present time, very nearly 50 percent of the astrometric observations, typically 6000, published each month in the Minor Planet Center's Minor Planet Circulars are obtained by means of a CCD.