Near Earth Asteroid Alignment

Near Earth Asteroid Tracking (NEAT) is a program directed by NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory to discover objects géocroiseurs. System NEAT began its observations in December 1995.

The principal researcher is Eleanor F. Helin, with the Co-researchers Steven H. Pravdo and David L. Rabinowitz.

NEAT has a cooperation agreement with the US Air Force to use the Télescope S GEODSS (Ground-based Electro-Optical Deep Space Surveillance) located on the volcano Haleakala, in the island of Maui to Hawaii. The telescopes with large field of the US Air Force were designed to observe the space engines in orbit optically. Team NEAT designed a camera CCC and a computing system for telescope GEODSS. The format of camera CCC is of 4096 × 4096 Pixel S and the field of vision is of 1,2° × 1,6°.

Set up in April 2001, the telescope of Schmidt of 1,2 m opening of the Observatoire of the Mount Palomar is also used to discover and follow the géocroiseurs objects. This telescope is equipped with a camera made up of 112 sensors CCC of 600 × 2400 pixels. It is the telescope which produced the images having allowed the discovery of (50000) Quaoar in 2002 and of (90377) Sedna in 2003 (published in 2004) and of famous the Xe planet (136199) Éris.

In addition to discovering thousands of asteroids, NEAT has also Co-overdraft (redécouvert) the Comet 54P/de Vico-Swift-NEAT and the star of Teegarden having a raised own movement.

An asteroid was named in its honor, (64070) NEAT, beginning 2005.

External bonds

Near Earth Asteroid Alignment

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