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Orbits and when to get excited: a thread
There's a lot of excitement in the last day or so about a candidate near-Earth asteroid that has the temporary designation #gb00234. This object is currently listed on the Possible Comet Confirmation Page minorplanetcenter.net/iau/NEO/pccp_t…
Entirely routinely and going on all the time, new moving things in the sky get found and added to the Near-Earth Object Confirmation Page of @MinorPlanetCtr minorplanetcenter.net/iau/NEO/toconf…
If they turn out to be a little fuzzy dot, with a cometary coma, they are moved from that list to the Possible Comet Confirmation Page [I'm simplifying a little, but broad-brush]. This step requires More Observations
When the orbit is sufficiently well known, @MinorPlanetCtr issues a Minor Planet Electronic Circular. minorplanetcenter.net/mpec/RecentMPE…
This step requires a fair bit of knowledge about the object's orbit. Which comes from observations
This step requires a fair bit of knowledge about the object's orbit. Which comes from observations
@MinorPlanetCtr Until the arc of an orbit is sufficiently long, there are really strong uncertainties in what its orbit can be. The ways this gets resolved? More observations
This is not the first object since 2017/1I, better known as ʻOumuamua, to show a hyperbolic orbit. Several short-arcs have flourished and slid slowly into the demise of straightforward parabolas. What it took? More observations
Orbits are determined by mathematical fits to the astrometry that's sent to the MPC by observers all around the world. At the moment, there are some weird residuals in the fit to the orbit of this candidate object. You know what will resolve that? More observations
I too will be delighted to see a second observable interstellar object. And I'm absolutely sure @MinorPlanetCtr are watching the incoming astrometry. For now? No MPEC yet. Sometimes, we just have to wait for the motion of the heavens. And make...more observations.
/fin
/fin
