La Cañada, 2011-08-26&27 FollowUp and recovery. Performance statistics

Following up the two recent discoveries : Asteroids  2011 OJ18 and 2011 OX27 I've found a new unidentified one which I sent to the MPC with the observatory designation LC00233, this turned out to be the recovery of a main belt asteroid discovered in 2007, LC00233 (K07R24J.

A view of the control room, two PCs are used, the one on the left to control the wheather station and the one on the right, controlling the telescope, camera and focuser as well as the dome's slit.

The 40cm RCT F10 telescope with the focuser, adaptive optics and camera attached.

Photos : José Ramón Camblor.

One of the observatoruy goals is to achieve the lowest possible residuals in the astrometric and photometric observations, the MPC publishes the number statistics of astrometric observations per observatory and year, below you can see the graph of these, with a very clear tendency towards minimum dispersion, in the year 2010 the dispersion was +/-034 arc seconds in RA and +/-0.35 in DEC which seems to be near the limits imposed by the average atmospheric seeing of the location.

New discovery, 2011 OX27

LC00228 K11O27X

Finaly the MPC automated software linked together the observations I've been chaining since July the 30th of what seems to be a main belt asteroid with a moderate inclination.


LC00228 KC2011 07 30.97138 21 15 18.50 +03 57 08.2 20.2 V J87
LC00228 KC2011 07 30.97899 21 15 18.11 +03 57 07.2 19.8 V J87
LC00228 KC2011 07 30.98659 21 15 17.74 +03 57 06.0 19.9 V J87

LC00230 KC2011 08 01.00418 21 14 31.09 +03 53 59.9 19.8 V J87
LC00230 KC2011 08 01.02848 21 14 29.98 +03 53 55.1 J87
LC00230 KC2011 08 01.03762 21 14 29.49 +03 53 52.8 20.0 V J87

LC00231 KC2011 08 04.01447 21 12 10.02 +03 43 03.8 19.8 V J87
LC00231 KC2011 08 04.02062 21 12 09.71 +03 43 02.3 19.8 V J87
LC00231 KC2011 08 04.03900 21 12 08.79 +03 42 57.8 20.0 V J87

LC00232 KC2011 08 06.94351 21 09 49.70 +03 30 02.2 19.7 V J87
LC00232 KC2011 08 06.95122 21 09 49.29 +03 30 00.0 19.9 V J87
LC00232 KC2011 08 06.95892 21 09 48.92 +03 29 57.6 20.2 V J87

Epoch 2011 July 18.0 TT = JDT 2455760.5
M 355.29126
n 0.24655720 Peri. 107.42858
a 2.5187840 Node 209.72381
e 0.1263783 Incl. 10.88941

From 9 observations 2011 July 30-Aug. 4.

Residuals
20110730 *J87 0.1+ 0.3- 20110801 J87 0.2- 0.4+ 20110804 J87 0.0+ 0.0-
20110730 J87 0.3- 0.0- 20110801 J87 0.8+ 0.3+ 20110804 J87 0.1- 0.0-
20110730 J87 0.4- 0.1+ 20110801 J87 0.1+ 0.3- 20110804 J87 0.1- 0.1-

Orbit for 2011 OJ18

The last observations allowed an orbit to be published by the MPC

2011 OJ18

Epoch 2011 July 18.0 TT = JDT 2455760.5
a 2.6515873
e 0.0768307
i 13.46677
From 12 observations 2011 July 24-Aug. 4.
Residuals
20110724 *J87 0.3- 0.4+ 20110730 J87 0.2+ 0.1- 20110730 J87 0.1+ 0.3-
20110724 J87 0.1- 0.1- 20110730 J87 0.0- 0.3+ 20110803 J87 0.0- 0.2-
20110724 J87 0.3+ 0.3- 20110730 J87 0.0+ 0.1- 20110804 J87 0.1- 0.1+
20110730 J87 0.3- 0.4+ 20110730 J87 0.0 0.2- 20110804 J87 0.1+ 0.1+

New comet C/2011 O1 (LINEAR)

A discovery by the LINEAR survey, posted on the NEOCP, has been found to show weak (8" to 12" coma) cometary activity by various observers.

I was unable to detect any activity in my confirming observations done from La Cañada, the seeing wasn't good enough and the star field very dense.

This seems to be a non periodic (parabolic e=1) comet.
References : MPEC 2011-P03, CBET 2775 (subscribers)