Planetary Society Hangout: Jan 24th, 2013 - Hunting Asteroids with Gary Hug

Thursday at noon PST/3pm EST/20:00 UT

Posted by Casey Dreier

2013/01/24 12:00 CST

Topics: citizen science, explaining science, podcasts and videos, Shoemaker NEO Grants, near-Earth asteroids

Gary Hug is an asteroid hunter. He scans the skies every night looking for new near-Earth objects and refining orbital measurements for existing ones. He is also one of the Planetary Society's Gene Shoemaker Fellows, which is our program to provide highly-skilled amateur astronomers with the equipment and support needed to continue the search for potentially hazardous asteroids.

Join Casey Dreier and Dr. Bruce Betts, who manages the Shoemaker program, as they talk to Gary Hug about how he hunts the night skies, the new NEO he discovered in January, and what drives him.

UPDATE 2013-01-27:

See Bruce's Blog post about Gary's most recent discovery of a near-Earth asteroid on January 7th, 2013.

The links mentioned by Gary Hug at the end of the show:

How to start observing and turning in data to the MPC on asteroids:

http://www.minorplanetcenter.net/iau/info/TechInfo.html

Once one has a sense of working with asteroids in general, here's a website that's a bit more specific to working with NEO's

http://asteroidi.uai.it/neocp/neocpguide.htm

The astrometry software I use is called Astrometrica by Herbert Raab - Linz, Austria

http://www.astrometrica.at/

Of course I'd be glad to answer questions; garyhug@ksmail.net

Gary Hug

Gary Hug Discovery Images for Near Earth Asteroid 2013 AS27

On January 7, 2013, Gary Hug discovered near Earth asteroid 2013 AS27 using the new capabilities from a Planetary Society Shoemaker grant provided camera. These two cycling images, taken 13 minutes apart, show the asteroid moving relative to the background stars. Note that there are also "blinking" pixels in the same region that just represent pixel noise, probably from cosmic ray hits in the detector during one image or the other.