The PHASTT Network

Asteroids 1993 FF19 and 1999 LW19 crossing apparent paths. Image set taken with the TFRM Baker-Nunn at Montsec. The same instrument that PHASTTER will be based on.

A couple of weeks ago, I had the pleasure of spending some time at the TFRM Baker-Nunn facility on Montsec in Spain. And what a pleasure it was. Clear skies, amazing food, and a telescope that worked as expected. Anyway, after collimating the TFRM, we left the telescope to run robotically, collecting images of fields around the ecliptic.

As a test of the capabilities of the TFRM Baker-Nunn, I’ve run some of the images through a quick-and-dirty processing workflow. Each image covers about 16 square degrees of sky and, typically, contains 20,000-30,000 stars. This can make it difficult for some software packages to come up with an accurate plate solution which, in turn, can negatively impact automated asteroid detection algorithms. Surprisingly, with very little effort, the first field was solved and asteroids automatically detected. With a 2 minute exposure, 20 asteroids as faint as M18.5 were automatically detected by the software, while I was able to pick out another 12 by blinking the images. The faintest obvious asteroid was magnitude 20.4 and another at magnitude 21.8 was (possibly) just on the threshold of detection. Undoubtedly, there are many more asteroids (probably twice as many) in this image set that are within the detection limit of the TFRM Baker-Nunn camera. One just needs a bit of patience to pick them out.

All-in-all, this was a good test that shows what a wonderful instrument a 55 year-old Baker-Nunn camera can be with a little bit of TLC…