Camarillo Observatory - Founded 1992

Special Campaign to Recover 2002 AA₂₉

Aten Asteroid 2002 AA₂₉ was discovered by LINEAR on 9 January 2002.  It made headlines when it was determined that its orbital characteristics were very similar to that of Earth.  The current knowledge suggests that it may have been a "quasi-satellite" of the Earth, for about 50 years, some 1500 years ago and will again be one several thousand years from now.  Therefore, it is of particular interest to scientists, being a strong candidate for radar observations from Arecibo during its approach in January 2003.  It will make its closest approach to Earth on 2003 January 8^th at a range of 15 Lunar distances.

Unfortunately, the current plane-of-sky pointing uncertainties are so large that it won't be observed by radar, unless it is recovered, and the new optical astrometry reduces the uncertainties substantially.   Its current ephemeris uncertainty is approximately ±0.7 degrees and it will not be getting particularly bright.  However, there are many amateur astronomers with the proper equipment to recover this asteroid under these conditions.

If it is not recovered during the next few weeks, if will probably remain lost for the next 95 years!

2002/2003 Recovery Predictions for Aten Asteroid 2002 AA₂₉

This recovery campaign is based on a methodology presented at the 2001 Minor Planet Amateur/Professional Workshop.  The technique is fairly simple.  The sky-plane uncertainty is divided into a number of 10’ by 10’ fields, representing a good cross-section of the existing amateur instrumentation.  The center of each field, is defined by a set of orbital elements, in the standard Minor Planet Center format, which should be compatible with most ephemeris programs.  For those who are interested in details of the technique, a postscript version of the paper is available.

For this campaign, there are only 16 fields that define the 3-sigma sky-plane uncertainty.  Therefore, field assignments will not be made.  Please note that the visual magnitude uncertainty in the table, represents differences in the ephemeris uncertainty.  In reality the actual brightness may vary by up to another full magnitude, based on the uncertainty of the light curve.

Any reported results (positive or negative) will be published here.

If you have any questions or comments, please use the link below for communication.

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Last modified: 10/24/04

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