HOME





Palomar–Leiden Survey
The Palomar–Leiden survey (PLS) was a successful astronomical survey to study faint minor planets in a collaboration between the U.S Palomar Observatory and the Dutch Leiden Observatory, and resulted in the discovery of thousands of asteroids, including many Jupiter trojans. The original PLS-survey took place in 1960, and was followed by three Palomar–Leiden Trojan survey campaigns, launched in 1971, 1973 and 1977. Its principal investigators were the astronomers Ingrid and Cornelis van Houten at Leiden and Tom Gehrels at Palomar. For the period of the entire survey (1960–1977), the trio of astronomers are credited with the discovery of 4,637 numbered minor planets, which received their own provisional designation, such as 6344 P-L, 4835 T-1 and 3181 T-2. PLS was one of the most productive minor planet surveys ever conducted: five new asteroid families were discovered, gaps at 1:3 and 2:5 orbital resonances with Jupiter were revealed, and hundreds of photographic p ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Minor Planet
According to the International Astronomical Union (IAU), a minor planet is an astronomical object in direct orbit around the Sun that is exclusively classified as neither a planet nor a comet. Before 2006, the IAU officially used the term ''minor planet'', but that year's meeting IAU definition of planet, reclassified minor planets and comets into dwarf planets and Small Solar System body, small Solar System bodies (SSSBs).Press release, IAU 2006 General Assembly: Result of the IAU Resolution votes
International Astronomical Union, August 24, 2006. Accessed May 5, 2008.
In contrast to the eight official planets of the Solar System, all minor planets fail to clearing the neighborhood, clear their orbital neighborhood. Minor planets include asteroids (near- ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Photographic Plate
Photographic plates preceded film as the primary medium for capturing images in photography. These plates, made of metal or glass and coated with a light-sensitive emulsion, were integral to early photographic processes such as heliography, daguerreotypes, and photogravure. Glass plates, thinner than standard window glass, became widely used in the late 19th century for their clarity and reliability. Although largely replaced by film during the 20th century, plates continued to be used for specialised scientific and medical purposes until the late 20th century. History Glass plates were far superior to film for research-quality imaging because they were stable and less likely to bend or distort, especially in large-format frames for wide-field imaging. Early plates used the wet collodion process. The wet plate process was replaced late in the 19th century by gelatin dry plates. A view camera nicknamed "The Mammoth" weighing was built by George R. Lawrence in 1899, sp ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Survey Designation
Provisional designation in astronomy is the naming convention applied to astronomical objects immediately following their discovery. The provisional designation is usually superseded by a permanent designation once a reliable orbit has been calculated. Approximately 47% of the more than 1,100,000 known minor planets remain provisionally designated, as hundreds of thousands have been discovered in the last two decades. The modern system is overseen by the Minor Planet Center of the International Astronomical Union. __TOC__ Minor planets The current system of provisional designation of minor planets (asteroids, centaurs and trans-Neptunian objects) has been in place since 1925. It superseded several previous conventions, each of which was in turn rendered obsolete by the increasing numbers of minor planet discoveries. A modern or new-style provisional designation consists of the year of discovery, followed by two letters and, possibly, a suffixed number. New-style provisiona ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


20936 Nemrut Dagi
20936 Nemrut Dagi (provisional designation ) is a stony Hungaria asteroid and Mars-grazer from the innermost regions of the asteroid belt, approximately in diameter. It was discovered on 13 May 1971, by Dutch astronomer couple Ingrid and Cornelis van Houten at Leiden, on photographic plates taken by Dutch–American astronomer Tom Gehrels at Palomar Observatory in California, United States. The asteroid has a rotation period of 3.28 hours, a likely spheroidal shape, and a high albedo typically seen among the enstatite-rich E-type asteroids. In 2012, it was named after the a dormant volcano Nemrut (Nemrut Dağı) in Turkey. Orbit and classification Nemrut Dagi belongs to the dynamical group of Hungaria asteroids, which form the innermost dense concentration of asteroids in the Solar System. It orbits the Sun in the inner main-belt at a distance of 1.7–2.0  AU once every 2 years and 6 months (922 days; semi-major axis of 1.85 AU). Its orbit has an eccentricity of ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Jupiter Trojan
The Jupiter trojans, commonly called trojan asteroids or simply trojans, are a large group of asteroids that share the planet Jupiter's orbit around the Sun. Relative to Jupiter, each Trojan (celestial body), trojan Libration point orbit, librates around one of Jupiter's stable Lagrangian point, Lagrange points: either ', existing 60° ahead of the planet in its orbit, or ', 60° behind. Jupiter trojans are distributed in two elongated, curved regions around these Lagrangian points with an average semi-major axis of about 5.2 Astronomical unit, AU. The first Jupiter trojan discovered, 588 Achilles, was spotted in 1906 by German astronomer Max Wolf. More than 9,800 Jupiter trojans have been found . By convention, they are each named from Greek mythology after a figure of the Trojan War, hence the name "trojan". The total number of Jupiter trojans larger than 1 km in diameter is believed to be about , approximately equal to the number of asteroids larger than 1 km in ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Asteroid Belt
The asteroid belt is a torus-shaped region in the Solar System, centered on the Sun and roughly spanning the space between the orbits of the planets Jupiter and Mars. It contains a great many solid, irregularly shaped bodies called asteroids or minor planets. The identified objects are of many sizes, but much smaller than planets, and, on average, are about one million kilometers (or six hundred thousand miles) apart. This asteroid belt is also called the main asteroid belt or main belt to distinguish it from other asteroid populations in the Solar System. The asteroid belt is the smallest and innermost circumstellar disc in the Solar System. Classes of Small Solar System body, small Solar System bodies in other regions are the near-Earth objects, the Centaur (minor planet), centaurs, the Kuiper belt objects, the scattered disc objects, the sednoids, and the Oort cloud objects. About 60% of the main belt mass is contained in the four largest asteroids: Ceres (dwarf planet), C ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Hilda Family
The Hilda family ( 001) is an ancient collisional asteroid family of at least 409 known asteroids, named for its largest member, the -across asteroid 153 Hilda. It lies within the larger dynamical group of Hilda asteroids, a group of asteroids in the 3:2 orbital resonance with Jupiter. All members of the family are dark P-type asteroids with albedo Albedo ( ; ) is the fraction of sunlight that is Diffuse reflection, diffusely reflected by a body. It is measured on a scale from 0 (corresponding to a black body that absorbs all incident radiation) to 1 (corresponding to a body that reflects ...s of around 0.06. Another asteroid family in the Hilda dynamical group is the Schubart family, named for its largest member, 1911 Schubart. An asteroid family is a group of physically-related asteroids usually created by a collision with an original larger asteroid, with the fragments continuing on similar orbits to the original. This is distinct from a dynamical group in that the ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Hungaria Family
The Hungaria family (003) is a collisional asteroid family of at least 2,966 known asteroids, named for its largest member, the -across asteroid 434 Hungaria. It lies within the larger dynamical group of Hungaria asteroids, a group of asteroids in the far inner asteroid belt, with semimajor axes of 1.78 to 2.00 AU. All members of the family are bright E-type asteroids with albedo Albedo ( ; ) is the fraction of sunlight that is Diffuse reflection, diffusely reflected by a body. It is measured on a scale from 0 (corresponding to a black body that absorbs all incident radiation) to 1 (corresponding to a body that reflects ...s of around 0.35-0.6. An asteroid family is a group of physically-related asteroids usually created by a collision with an original larger asteroid, with the fragments continuing on similar orbits to the original. This is distinct from a dynamical group in that the members of a dynamical group only share similar orbits because of gravitational interacti ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Solar System
The Solar SystemCapitalization of the name varies. The International Astronomical Union, the authoritative body regarding astronomical nomenclature, specifies capitalizing the names of all individual astronomical objects but uses mixed "Solar System" and "solar system" structures in theinaming guidelines document. The name is commonly rendered in lower case ('solar system'), as, for example, in the ''Oxford English Dictionary'' an''Merriam-Webster's 11th Collegiate Dictionary''. is the gravitationally bound Planetary system, system of the Sun and the objects that orbit it. It Formation and evolution of the Solar System, formed about 4.6 billion years ago when a dense region of a molecular cloud collapsed, forming the Sun and a protoplanetary disc. The Sun is a typical star that maintains a hydrostatic equilibrium, balanced equilibrium by the thermonuclear fusion, fusion of hydrogen into helium at its stellar core, core, releasing this energy from its outer photosphere. As ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Minor Planet Designation
A formal minor-planet designation is, in its final form, a number–name combination given to a minor planet (asteroid, centaur, trans-Neptunian object and dwarf planet but not comet). Such designation always features a leading number (catalog or IAU number) assigned to a body once its orbital path is sufficiently secured (so-called "numbering"). The formal designation is based on the minor planet's provisional designation, which was previously assigned automatically when it had been observed for the first time. Later on, the provisional part of the formal designation may be replaced with a name (so-called "naming"). Both formal and provisional designations are overseen by the Minor Planet Center (MPC), a branch of the International Astronomical Union. Currently, a number is assigned only after the orbit has been secured by four well-observed oppositions. For unusual objects, such as near-Earth asteroids, numbering might already occur after three, maybe even only two, opposition ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  




Minor Planet Center
The Minor Planet Center (MPC) is the official body for observing and reporting on minor planets under the auspices of the International Astronomical Union (IAU). Founded in 1947, it operates at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. Function The Minor Planet Center is the official worldwide organization in charge of collecting observational data for minor planets (such as asteroids), calculating their orbits and publishing this information via the '' Minor Planet Circulars''. Under the auspices of the International Astronomical Union (IAU), it operates at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, which is part of the Center for Astrophysics along with the Harvard College Observatory. The MPC runs a number of free online services for observers to assist them in observing minor planets and comets. The complete catalogue of minor planet orbits (sometimes referred to as the "Minor Planet Catalogue") may also be freely downloaded. In addition to astrometric data, the ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]