Observations Accepted!
Long time since my last post, I know. But I’ve been very busy :). In the morning from 9 am till noon I’ve been doing mental labor on the paper for my research project, while from 2 pm till 11 pm I’ve been doing physical labor in the chocolate factory ;). I’ll tell you more about my job in the chocolate factory later (never seen that much chocolate lol), but now I have some more recent exciting news…
Yesterday evening, I submitted the 18 (analyzed) observations that we did on our little asteroid (2005HN3) to the Minor Planet Center so that the orbit of 2005HN3 could be improved with our small input.
And guess what??? This morning…
…I saw that my observations had been published in the Minor Planet Electronic Circular (MPEC) and that all 18 observations were accepted. Too bad I haven’t been able to find my name anywhere on the web in the credits :P. I’m sure it’s in their database somewhere, but apparently they don’t publish names online.
The the orbit of 2005HN3 has been recalculated this morning with our observations, improving the orbital elements by (a modest) 1.2 %! The improvement is quite small because we submitted our data pretty late. Had we had the experience in April that we now have, we could have submitted the data one or two days after we did the observations. Then the improvement would have been much more significant.
Our observations were a lot more accurate though than the ones already done on 2005HN3. Ours were almost 4 times more accurate!! This means that the accuracy of all the astrometry done on the asteroid up till now has improved by 8 % because of the addition of our measurements :D.
Anyway, like I said, the significance of our input is very modest, but it’s still exciting to know that I’ve done my first real contribution to the astronomy research community :).
Let’s hope it’s the first stone of something much larger :).
Tijl Kindt
Wow! Congratulations!!! :D That’s truly amazing. You’re being too modest though. Think about all the professions in the world where 1.2% makes all the difference in the world. (World records have less of a difference than that.) This is your calling, I can tell. I’m really really proud of you, and wish you continued discoveries, excitement, and success!! :D By the way, do you think you could increase your chocolate factory’s production by 1.2% and send that extra to me…? ;) *kigs* Susanne
July 17th, 2005 at 19:18
Heh, well… in general 1.2 % isn’t exactly what you’d call ‘the difference in the world’ in the astronomer’s community ;). Astronomers calculate in orders of magnitude :P. 10 kg is only slightly different from 100 kg in astronomy.
Although… Maybe in orbit calculations this doesn’t really apply since you can’t be certain enough I guess whether an asteroid is going to hit us or not. Annemarie and I provided about one fifth of all the observations done on 2005HN3 and there won’t be any more observations on the asteroid for at least another year or so, as it has gone way too far from Earth to be still detectable.
Anyway… Maybe you’re right… ;).
Oh and about the chocolate… If you manage to get me a freshly made New York smoothie with orange juice, lemon juice and extra magnesium, I’ll see what I can do for you…
;)
July 17th, 2005 at 23:13