Last NEO observations before lockdown
Our Neorocker, Astronomical Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences (CAS), was at the European Southern Observatory just before it was temporarily shut down, due to the global health emergency.
CAS had an observing run at the 1.54-m Danish telescope on the La Silla station of the European Southern Observatory in Chile from March 16 to 23. They took rich photometric observations for several Near-Earth Asteroids (NEAs).
Image of the 1.54-m Danish Telescope
The most productive night was that of March 17, which had great sky conditions, allowing them to obtain high-quality data for as many as 6 NEAs. Among them, the most interesting were:
- (512245) 2016 AU8 that is a candidate space mission-accessible target;
- 2020 AZ2 that is a newly discovered binary Amor-type asteroid. CAS observed an eclipse event between its components, with the satellite hiding in the primary’s shadow;
- (388945) 2008 TZ3 that is a slowly rotating Apollo-type asteroid in excited spin state, which was also a target for the Arecibo radar facility in Puerto Rico;
- an Apollo-type asteroid 2020 DP4, discovered just a few weeks before the observations, and that CAS found with their observations to be a super-fast rotator with a spin period of 18 minutes only, indicating that it has a non-zero global tensile strength.
Image from allsky camera installed at the telescope, taken on March 17 (telescope with dome slit open is seen on the right side)
Like all of us, CAS looks forward to resuming photometric observations of NEAs when the La Silla Observatory is operational again (hopefully in a not very distant future). By accumulating enough observational data for a good sample of NEAs later this and next year, our Neorockers will determine spin, shape and binary properties of the observed objects and obtain constraints on distributions of the physical properties in the population of Near-Earth Asteroids.
Photos by CAS during Observational Run.
