Thursday, January 17, 2008

My 7th NEA (Near Earth Asteroid)

Discovered my 7th Near Earth Asteroid 2008 AL33

Jan. 2008 will probably be marked as my last month of observation. The "upper heaven" had been very kind to me and I discovered my 7th NEA (Near Earth asteroid) on Jan. 15. From the discovery images below you could tell it was very dim (between mag. 20.5 -21.0). Most normal asteroids in this region move from East to West (retrograde), but this one moved from West to East, and thus reveal it's NEA nature. It is about 100 meter in size.

The NEA was discovered by looking at the group of three images at at right hand side. If you look closely towards the left hand side of the middle mag. 19 star, you could see a tiny dot woving towards the star. In such a situation, usually even 3 images could still have false detection. Luckily I have another two prior images which also cover the same area, upon very careful inspection I could find the faint object again.