[ExI] Asteroid on track for possible (probability of 1:25) Marshit

[Eugen Leitl]

On Thu, Jan 03, 2008 at 12:21:56PM -0700, Kevin H wrote:

>    That's the other thing I was wondering: to what extent can the amateur
>    community play a role in the detection of NEOs.  I think, for one,

They already do. What I would do is to issue semiprofessional-level
amateurs Internet-controlled instrument control boxes and/or decent 
CCDs for their instruments, pay for the broadband connection or even 
in some cases pay for the instruments, let them donate time and issue 
bounties for new object spotters.

The bang for the buck would be considerable.

>    they'd have to be using the same online database, maybe NASA's NEO
>    program can in some way open up their database to include reports from
>    amateurs (perhaps with some sort of trust metric so that only reliable

It would be good to offload processing elsewhere. Maybe the control box
could process the images on site, and pick candidates.

>    reporters are treated seriously).  But, I guess my reservation with
>    this approach is that many asteroids which are significant from a
>    planetary security perspective are both relatively small (2007 WD5 is
>    itself only 160 feet long) and dark*, that is they don't reflect a lot

I don't think object this size are much of a problem. Sure, it would suck
if we lose a big city, but what we'd like to catch are world-enders.

>    of the sunlight that falls on them (I can't vouch for other forms of
>    radiation).  So the question is, to someone who knows more about this
>    than I do, what are the chances that a NEO would be of a higher
>    magnitude than earth bound "amateur" telescopes can detect?

I think the problem with observation is that it is very patchy (you need
to observe the entire sky, all the time) and that you don't see stuff
that comes out of the sun. For these, spacborne platforms WayOut(tm) 
could be worthwhile.

>    And, of course, all of this needs to have a cost-benefit analysis.

There are very rare objects which however will completely ruin the day
for many billion people. What's the cost-benefit analysis for that?

>    Since this is really just a chat list, we might want to keep the
>    nitty-gritty serious talk to the professionals :)

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
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