| Near Earth Asteroid Tracking |
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Shopping Asteroid |
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Information AboutNear Earth Asteroid Tracking |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT NEAR EARTH ASTEROID TRACKING | |
| astronomical surveys | |
| asteroid discoverers | |
| near-earth object tracking | |
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The original principal investigator was Eleanor F. Helin , with co-investigators Steven H. Pravdo and David L. Rabinowitz . NEAT has a cooperative agreement with the U.S. Air Force to use a GEODSS Telescope located on Haleakala , Maui , Hawaii . GEODSS stands for Ground-based Electro-Optical Deep Space Surveillance and these wide field Air Force telescopes were designed to optically observe Earth orbital spacecraft. The NEAT team designed a CCD camera and computer system for the GEODSS telescope. The CCD camera format is 4096 × 4096 Pixel s and the field of view is 1.2° × 1.6°. Beginning in April 2001 , the Samuel Oschin Telescope (1.2 metre aperture Schmidt telescope at Palomar Observatory ) was also put into service to discover and track near-Earth objects. This telescope is equipped with a camera containing 112 CCDs each 2400 × 600. This is the telescope that produced the images leading to the discovery of 50000 Quaoar in 2002 , and 90377 Sedna in 2003 (published 2004 ) and the 10th planet 2003 UB313 . In addition to discovering thousands of Asteroid s, NEAT is also credited with the co-discovery (recovery) of periodic Comet 54P/de Vico-Swift-NEAT and of the high proper motion Teegarden's Star . An asteroid was named in its honour, 64070 NEAT , in early 2005 . EXTERNAL LINKS |
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