Lincoln Near Earth Asteroid Research

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Number of objects close to the earth, detected by various projects
  • LINEAR
  • NEAT
  • Spacewatch
  • LONEOS
  • Catalina Sky Survey
  • Pan-STARRS
  • NeoWise
  • ATLAS
  • all other

    • Lincoln Near Earth Asteroid Research ( LINEAR , English for Lincoln Institute for Researching Near-Earth Asteroids ) is a project of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for sky surveillance with the aim of discovering all near-earth asteroids in good time before a collision with the earth . The GEODSS instruments used for the project are installed on the test site of the Lincoln Institute on the White Sands Missile Range in Socorro in the US state of New Mexico . The data obtained are sent to the Lincoln Institute at Hanscom Air Force Base in Lexington in the US state of Massachusetts for evaluation and are also evaluated using the Sentry monitoring system .

    The main inner belt asteroid (2460) Mitlincoln was named after the Lincoln Near Earth Asteroid Research and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology .

    Discoveries

    The project is funded by the US Air Force and the US space agency NASA . Since the start of the project in 1996, 231,082 new objects have been identified, including earth orbit cruisers confirmed in 2019 (as of September 15, 2011).

    Numerous comets were also discovered as part of the surveillance program ; as of September 15, 2011 there were 279 confirmed comets. All these comets therefore have the component LINEAR in their name or - if the discovery was made by another observer or group of observers at the same time - a combined one, such as B. LINEAR NEAT . The comet with the designation C / 2002 T7 (LINEAR) , which was discovered on October 14, 2002 and reached an apparent brightness of about in May 2004, is of particular importance .

    At around the same time, comet C / 2001 Q4 (NEAT) reached its greatest brightness, so that two bright comets that could be seen with the naked eye could be seen simultaneously from the southern hemisphere of the earth. For observers in the northern hemisphere, the visibility conditions for comet C / 2002 T7 (LINEAR) were unfavorable.

    Also noteworthy is the comet C / 1999 S4 (LINEAR) , the core of which broke into numerous pieces as it approached the sun in August 1999. The comet then almost completely dissolved within a few days.

    See also

    Web links

    Individual evidence

    1. ^ Lutz D. Schmadel : Dictionary of Minor Planet Names . Fifth Revised and Enlarged Edition. Ed .: Lutz D. Schmadel. 5th edition. Springer Verlag , Berlin , Heidelberg 2003, ISBN 978-3-540-29925-7 , pp.  186 (English, 992 pp., Link.springer.com [ONLINE; accessed on August 12, 2019] Original title: Dictionary of Minor Planet Names . First edition: Springer Verlag, Berlin, Heidelberg 1992): “1980 TX 4 . Discovered 1980 Oct. 1 by LG Taff and D. Beatty at Socorro. "