Near-Earth Asteroid Tracking (NEAT) was a program run by

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...

and the

Jet Propulsion Laboratory The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is a Federally funded research and development centers, federally funded research and development center (FFRDC) in La Cañada Flintridge, California, Crescenta Valley, United States. Founded in 1936 by Cali ...

, surveying the sky for

near-Earth object A near-Earth object (NEO) is any small Solar System body orbiting the Sun whose closest approach to the Sun ( perihelion) is less than 1.3 times the Earth–Sun distance (astronomical unit, AU). This definition applies to the object's orbit a ...

s. NEAT was conducted from December 1995 until April 2007, at

GEODSS The United States Space Surveillance Network (SSN) detects, tracks, catalogs and identifies artificial objects orbiting Earth, e.g. active/inactive satellites, spent rocket bodies, or fragmentation debris. The system is the responsibility of Uni ...

on Hawaii (Haleakala-NEAT; 566), as well as at

Palomar Observatory The Palomar Observatory is an astronomical research observatory in the Palomar Mountains of San Diego County, California, United States. It is owned and operated by the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). Research time at the observat ...

in California (Palomar-NEAT;

644 __NOTOC__ Year 644 ( DCXLIV) was a leap year starting on Thursday of the Julian calendar. The denomination 644 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era became the prevalent method in Europ ...

). With the

discovery Discovery may refer to: * Discovery (observation), observing or finding something unknown * Discovery (fiction), a character's learning something unknown * Discovery (law), a process in courts of law relating to evidence Discovery, The Discovery ...

of more than 40 thousand

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 ...

s, NEAT has been one of the most successful programs in this field, comparable to the

Catalina Sky Survey Catalina Sky Survey (CSS; obs. code: 703) is an astronomical survey to discover comets and asteroids. It is conducted at the Steward Observatory's Catalina Station, located near Tucson, Arizona, in the United States. CSS focuses on the searc ...

LONEOS Lowell Observatory Near-Earth-Object Search (LONEOS) was a project designed to discover asteroids and comets that orbit near the Earth. The project, funded by NASA, was directed by astronomer Ted Bowell of Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Ariz ...

and

Mount Lemmon Survey Mount Lemmon Survey (MLS) is a part of the Catalina Sky Survey with observatory code G96. MLS uses a cassegrain reflector telescope (with 10560x10560-pixel camera at the f/1.6 prime focus, for a five square degree field of view) operated by ...

. NEAT was the successor to the

Palomar Planet-Crossing Asteroid Survey The Palomar Planet-Crossing Asteroid Survey (PCAS) was an astronomical survey, initiated by American astronomers Eleanor Helin and Eugene Shoemaker at the U.S Palomar Observatory, California, in 1973. The program is responsible for the discovery ...

(PCAS).

History

The original principal investigator was Eleanor F. Helin, with co-investigators Steven H. Pravdo and David L. Rabinowitz. NEAT had a cooperative agreement with the

U.S. Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the air service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is one of the six United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Tracing its origins to 1 ...

to use a

telescope located on Haleakala,

Maui Maui (; Hawaiian language, Hawaiian: ) is the second largest island in the Hawaiian archipelago, at 727.2 square miles (1,883 km2). It is the List of islands of the United States by area, 17th-largest in the United States. Maui is one of ...

Hawaii Hawaii ( ; ) is an island U.S. state, state of the United States, in the Pacific Ocean about southwest of the U.S. mainland. One of the two Non-contiguous United States, non-contiguous U.S. states (along with Alaska), it is the only sta ...

. GEODSS stands for Ground-based Electro-Optical Deep Space Surveillance and these wide field Air Force telescopes were designed to optically observe Earth orbital spacecraft. The NEAT team designed a CCD camera and computer system for the GEODSS telescope. The CCD camera format was 4096 × 4096

pixel In digital imaging, a pixel (abbreviated px), pel, or picture element is the smallest addressable element in a Raster graphics, raster image, or the smallest addressable element in a dot matrix display device. In most digital display devices, p ...

s and the field of view was 1.2° × 1.6°. Beginning in April 2001, the

Samuel Oschin telescope The Samuel Oschin telescope (), also called the Oschin Schmidt, is a Schmidt camera at the Palomar Observatory in northern San Diego County, California, United States. It consists of a Schmidt corrector plate and a (f/2.5) mirror. The instrumen ...

( aperture Schmidt telescope at

) was also put into service to discover and track near-Earth objects. This telescope was equipped with a camera containing 112 CCDs each 2400 × 600. This was the telescope that produced the images leading to the discovery of

50000 Quaoar Quaoar ( minor-planet designation: 50000 Quaoar) is a ringed dwarf planet in the Kuiper Belt, a ring of many icy planetesimals beyond Neptune. It has an elongated ellipsoidal shape with an average diameter of , about half the size of the d ...

in 2002, and

90377 Sedna Sedna ( minor-planet designation: 90377 Sedna) is a dwarf planet in the outermost reaches of the Solar System, orbiting the Sun far beyond the orbit of Neptune. Discovered in 2003, the frigid planetoid is one of the reddest known among Solar ...

in 2003 (published 2004) and the

dwarf planet A dwarf planet is a small planetary-mass object that is in direct orbit around the Sun, massive enough to be hydrostatic equilibrium, gravitationally rounded, but insufficient to achieve clearing the neighbourhood, orbital dominance like the ...

Eris. In addition to discovering thousands of

asteroid An asteroid is a minor planet—an object larger than a meteoroid that is neither a planet nor an identified comet—that orbits within the Solar System#Inner Solar System, inner Solar System or is co-orbital with Jupiter (Trojan asteroids). As ...

s, NEAT was also credited with the co-discovery (recovery) of periodic

comet A comet is an icy, small Solar System body that warms and begins to release gases when passing close to the Sun, a process called outgassing. This produces an extended, gravitationally unbound atmosphere or Coma (cometary), coma surrounding ...

54P/de Vico-Swift-NEAT and of the high proper motion

Teegarden's star Teegarden's Star (''SO J025300.5+165258'', ''2MASS J02530084+1652532'', ''LSPM J0253+1652'') is an stellar classification, M-type red dwarf star in the constellation Aries (constellation), Aries, from the Solar System. Although it is L ...

. The C/2001 Q4 (NEAT) comet was discovered on August 24, 2001 by NEAT. An asteroid was named in its honour, 64070 NEAT, in early 2005.

Discoveries

1996 PW is an exceptionally eccentric trans-Neptunian object and a damocloid on an orbit typical of long-period comets but one that showed no sign of cometary activity around the time it was discovered. The unusual object measures approximately in ...

was discovered on 1996 August 9 by a NEAT automated search camera on

Haleakalā Haleakalā (; Hawaiian: ), or the East Maui Volcano, is a massive, active shield volcano that forms more than 75% of the Hawaiian Islands, Hawaiian Island of Maui. The western 25% of the island is formed by another volcano, Mauna Kahalawai, als ...

. It was the first object that was not an active comet discovered on an orbit typical of a long-period comets.Weissman, P. R. & Levison, H. F. (1997)
Origin and evolution of the unusual object 1996 PW: Asteroids from the Oort cloud?
''The Astrophysical Journal'', 488, L133–L136 This raised the possibility it was an

extinct comet An extinct comet is a comet that has expelled most of its volatile ice and has little left to form a tail and coma. In a dormant comet, rather than being depleted, any remaining volatile components have been sealed beneath an inactive surface la ...

or an unusual asteroid.

References

External links

Near Earth Asteroid Tracking
{{Authority control Astronomical surveys Asteroid surveys Astronomical discoveries by institution * Jet Propulsion Laboratory Near-Earth object tracking Palomar Observatory

History

Discoveries

See also

References

External links