I am excited to announce the latest round of winners of The Planetary Society’s Shoemaker Near-Earth Object (NEO) Grant program. Named after pioneering planetary geologist Gene Shoemaker, these grants support very advanced amateur astronomers around the world in their efforts to find, track, and characterize near-Earth asteroids. This round’s winners continue a long tradition of Planetary Society-supported planetary defense, protecting the Earth from the threat of asteroid impacts.
Background
Though dedicated professional telescopes make the majority of NEO discoveries now, they don’t have adequate observing time or geographical distribution. That is where our Shoemaker grant winners come in, making important contributions to three areas of planetary defense:
- Characterization: Some winners focus on characterization to determine asteroid properties. They typically carry out photometric (brightness) studies to determine properties like spin rate and whether what looks like one asteroid is actually two — a binary pair. This type of information will be crucial when an asteroid deflection is required, and in the meantime, for understanding the near-Earth asteroid population in general.
- Tracking: Other winners focus on astrometric (sky position) tracking observations that are necessary for calculating an asteroid’s orbit, including whether it will ever collide with the Earth. Without follow-up observations, newly discovered asteroids can even be lost.
- Discovery: Because most professional NEO surveys that discover asteroids are in the northern hemisphere, there is still a need for discovery. Even with the new Vera Rubin Observatory, there will be a need for rapid follow-up tracking in the southern hemisphere. Around the world, software innovations are also increasing discovery rates.
We are sincerely grateful to our expert advisory/review panel: Planetary Society NEO Grant Coordinator Tim Spahr, NEO Sciences LLC; Carl Hergenrother, Ascending Node Technologies, LLC; and Federica Spoto, the Minor Planet Center.
Summary of awards
Thanks to the support of our generous members, we were able to award $87,562 in this year’s round of grants, our largest amount ever for one round of Shoemaker grants. The home countries and observatories of the 10 winners (another record) are in eight countries on four continents. Over the program’s 28-year history, approximately $673,000 has been granted in 88 awards to astronomers in 23 countries on six continents. Here are summaries of the newest winners.
Awardees
Leonardo Amaral at the Observatório Campo dos Amarais (OCA) in Brazil is awarded $5,457 for a new computer with an advanced graphics card for image processing. OCA is an automated facility focused on searching and follow-up of NEOs, so far discovering 26 NEOs and one comet. It uses synthetic tracking techniques, which improve its ability to detect objects to magnitude 21. Its current limitation is image processing by a modest graphics card, restricting the speed and depth of searches. Improvements to the graphics card will increase efficiency and discoveries.