There's actually quite a bit more to this story not mentioned in
the BBC piece, but it's too long to go into.
>> What would it take to construct a dozen or so medium sized telescopes
>> around the world...
It's already done: there are about 150 active amateur sites doing
astrometry follow-up on asteroids and comets. Generally any of our
fast-moving discoveries with LONEOS are re-observed within 12 hours
as night proceeds around Earth. Folks with 12-inch telescopes are
getting down to mag. 21 nowadays (moving targets remember), so sheer
aperture is not the limiting factor.
Here's a very typical observer list from the latest MPEC that was
issued this morning for a new Apollo-type asteroid:
649 Powell Observatory, Louisburg. Observers R. Fredrick, R. Trentman,
H. Lawrence. 0.75-m Newtonian + CCD.
704 Lincoln Laboratory ETS, New Mexico. Observers M. Blythe, F. Shelly,
M. Bezpalko, R. Huber, L. Manguso, D. Torres, R. Kracke, M. McCleary,
H. Stange, A. Milner. Measurers J. Stuart, R. Sayer, J. Evans, J. Kommers.
1.0-m f/2.15 reflector + CCD.
926 Tenagra II Observatory. Observers P. R. Holvorcem, M. Schwartz. 0.81-m
f/7 Ritchey-Chretien + CCD.
H06 New Mexico Skies Observatory. Observer R. Hutsebaut.
H36 Sandlot Observatory, Scranton. Observer G. Hug. 0.3-m Schmidt-Cassegrain
+ CCD.
The object was found by LINEAR (obs code 704) at about mag. 19.5;
the first follow-up was by 649 (Louisburg, Kansas), which is a
well-organized club that's using a home-made 30-inch. They are among
the very best amateur operations out there. Other data was taken by
Gary Hug with a 12-inch Meade in Scranton PA, and robotically (a fairly
new trend) by Paulo Holvorcem (Brazil using Mike Schwarz' robotic
telescope in southern Arizona), and by a German amateur using a robotic
telescope at New Mexico Skies astro-resort (I think the telescope is
either a 12-inch Meade or C14).
We're actually interested in finding a few folks to do "instant"
follow-up of fast-movers on the same night as the discovery observation.
If you can do the astrometry and are typically observing during the
second half of any particular night, then let me know. YOu do need to
have an MPC observatory code assigned in order for the data to be
useful (the code assignment also implies you've shown you can do the
astrometry correctly). It's also greatly preferable that the reductions
be done more-or-less in real time (waiting a day or two makes the
data useless).
\Brian
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