New Main Belt Asteroid Discovery

Greetings from the International Astronomoical Search Collaboration

New Main Belt Asteroid Discovery

Congratulations are in order.  A. Kopycinska, M. Lewandowski, H. Przygucki, K. Urbanski, P. Woznicki, & J. Urbanski from Gimnazjum Miejskie im. M. Kopernika in Poland discovered the Main Belt asteroid 2010 MN2.  The discovery was made on June 18th and recently confirmed by the Minor Planet Center (Harvard).

2010 MN2 is located at an average distance of 3.0 AU from the Sun, varying between 2.6 AU and 3.5 AU.  Taking 5.3 years to orbit the Sun, the asteroid's orbit is inclined 18 degrees from the ecliptic indicating it has been disturbed by a collision with another asteroid or a gravitational interaction with Jupiter.

This is the same school that made the VIO (virtual impactor observation) of  2010 MF1 on June 27.  This observation assisted in the removal of this near-Earth object from the JPL list of potentially hazardous asteroids.

Congratulations.  Great job!!

Final Day of the Campaign

Today is the final day of the All-India Asteroid Search Campaign and International Asteroid Search Campaign.  All of the schools did a wonderful job.

In spite of the persistent overcast skies and technical problems at the ARI Observatory (Westfield, IL) there were 2 Main Belt asteroid discoveries, 1 virtual impactor observation (PAH), 13 near-Earth object confirmations, and 137 NEO observations.

This is a very impressive accomplishment.  Congratulations to all of you and your students!!

Happy Hunting!!