Rob McNaughts 33rd!

Outbackmanyep · #1 27-04-2007, 04:27 PM

I dunno if theres already been a thread on here, but on the 20th April Rob McNaught discovered #33 and has become the astronomer with most comet discoveries to his name, passing Gene Shoemaker......

Well done again Rob!

matt · #2 27-04-2007, 04:28 PM

Well done, Rob

Enjoyed your article in the current AS&T

iceman (Mike) · #3 27-04-2007, 04:40 PM

What a great achievement! I look forward to meeting him and hearing him speak at BSG2007!

Ric · #4 27-04-2007, 06:22 PM

Congrats to Rob, an excellent achievement.

Cheers

rogerg (Roger) · #5 27-04-2007, 07:11 PM

That's a darn good effort. I have to admit I wouldn't have known what number is considered high or low for a professional, but comparing it to the previous best...

spacezebra (Petra) · #6 27-04-2007, 09:38 PM

Looking forward to meeting him too!

Quote:

Originally Posted by iceman

What a great achievement! I look forward to meeting him and hearing him speak at BSG2007!

Cheers Petra

maksutover · #7 28-04-2007, 12:26 PM

thats amazing! good to know were leading the world in comet discoveries!

fringe_dweller · #8 28-04-2007, 01:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by maksutover

thats amazing! good to know were leading the world in comet discoveries!

er that would have to go to the Lincoln Near Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) project/automated sky survey - 142 comets

http://www.ll.mit.edu/LINEAR/

- who have been interestingly quiet for a while now ..hmmm..

yet another amazing achievment tho for Rob, he must be getting bored of breaking records? lol

I am always most impressed by the visual comet discovery record of Bill Bradfield (south aussie), which will probably stand for all time now

higginsdj · #9 28-04-2007, 02:08 PM

Not taking anything away from Rob and his tireless work, I am amazed why they aren't being named for the Catalina Sky Survey. (I thought they were funding his work)

Cheers

fringe_dweller · #10 28-04-2007, 02:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by higginsdj

Not taking anything away from Rob and his tireless work,

agreed, that was not my intention

Quote:

Originally Posted by higginsdj

I am amazed why they aren't being named for the Catalina Sky Survey. (I thought they were funding his work)

Cheers

true, and it gets even more confusing when you Gordon and Rob combined under SidingSprings

lol oh well - I am glad the discovers personally are getting credit now and not just the boring old surveys name on them

we have a few hundred SOHO's not to mention, wonder how many STEREO'
s theres gonna be

10 years time> 1000?!

h0ughy (David) · #11 28-04-2007, 04:46 PM

A great achievement, and hopefully it could be like his last discovery?

Rob_K · #12 28-04-2007, 05:29 PM

Ephemeris for McNaught C/2007 H1 is at:

http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/Ephem.../2007H1_1.html

V faint now at mag 16.1 and will peak at mag 15.1 in August/September.

Cheers -

loomberah (Gordon) · #13 28-04-2007, 09:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by fringe_dweller

... I am glad the discovers personally are getting credit now and not just the boring old surveys name on them...

only when we tell the MPC at the time of the discovery report that it is a comet. Otherwise for us it will just be called C/Siding Spring, I have a couple of them as well as 5 called C/ or P/Garradd.
If it is just a moving star-like point on our images, like a typical asteroid, we just report it as an asteroid, and if the motion looks like a main belt asteroid, or at least nothing too far out of the ordinary, then it is just reported with the general astrometry and is left in the one night stands file at the MPC. It could remain there until the MPC link it with another night, or else someone independently discovers it and reports it as a comet, preferably with follow up observations (that will allow the orbit to be linked to any earlier observations).

cheers, Gordon

fringe_dweller · #14 28-04-2007, 10:16 PM

ahh, no coma or rough orbit fit, no dice, gotchya,
now that you explained that, I think I remember reading you guys explain this procedure on the ml or somwhere? recently.
Anyway it's interesting stuff, thanks for clearing that up Gordon! appreciate it

and happy hunting!

higginsdj · #15 30-04-2007, 07:49 AM

Gordon, do you and Robert have to personally identify all moving objects in the survey or do you have software that does it like LINEAR?

Cheers

loomberah (Gordon) · #16 30-04-2007, 08:00 AM

The software IDs what it thinks are moving objects, but most of that is noise, hot pixels, cosmic rays, alignments of stars, ghost reflections of stars, edges of star haloes, galaxies etc, so we have to look through all that and validate what is real by eye. Anything that gets a high rating in the software (which all the non-real objects generally do) and looks to be real, we check if its a known object, either from known asteroids in MPCOrb.dat, or on the MPCs asteroid checker page. Sometimes interesting objects have very low ratings, but they have a coma or tail such as P/2007 H3

So, in a typical night we might look at thousands of non-real "detections" and anything from zero to thousands of real objects, depending on where in the sky we are searching.

cheers, Gordon

higginsdj · #17 30-04-2007, 03:56 PM

I don't envy you that job though the fringe benefits are good :-)

loomberah (Gordon) · #18 30-04-2007, 05:14 PM

The hours suck a bit though... especially in winter!

Outbackmanyep · #19 01-05-2007, 03:51 PM

How many is that for you Gordon??

Are you and Rob having bets like the shearers do in the shed?? Hehe

Cheers!

loomberah (Gordon) · #20 01-05-2007, 06:02 PM

I'm up to 5 with my name on them now, plus a handful of Siding Spring ones that didn't look like comets when I found them.
Not much chance I will catch Rob, although I'm 3:1 ahead this year