VIRTUAL OBSERVATORIES of the FUTURE June 2000 Caltech Solar System Surveys Steven H. Pravdo Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Solar System Surveys Goals Discover > 90% of the > 1km Near-Earth Asteroids (NEAs) by 2010 Measure directly the number of Kuiper Belt Objects down to the typical size of cometary nuclei (a few km) Enable physical characterization of asteroids and comets
Solar System Surveys Projects Near-Earth Asteroid Tracking -NEAT (NASA/JPL/USAFRL) LINEAR (MIT-LL/USAF) LONEOS--Lowell Observatory Catalina (UA) Spacewatch (UA) TAOS (Acad. Sin., IA, LLNL)
Solar System Surveys Data TelescopesDaily Data (GB)Archive/Access NEAT 1.2-m (2)25-100Yes LINEAR 1.0-m (2)70None LONEOS 0.6-m?? Catalina 0.4, 0.7-m8None…but Spacewatch0.9,1.8-m13None…but TAOS 0.5-m (3)21None…but
SkyMorph: 3-D Sky Catalog Description A World-Wide-Web-accessible catalog of celestial images from the Near-Earth Asteroid Tracking (NEAT) database – Images and objects catalogs Features position AND time information to study variable intensity and moving objects
SkyMorph: 3-D Sky Catalog SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE
SkyMorph: 3-D Sky Catalog IMAGE PROCESSING FLOW DIAGRAM
SkyMorph: 3-D Sky Catalog SCIENCE DATA
SkyMorph: 3-D Sky Catalog DATA INGESTION
SkyMorph: 3-D Sky Catalog CURRENT SKY COVERAGE
SkyMorph: 3-D Sky Catalog MOVING TARGET DETECTION Hale-Bopp (21 June 1996) Toutatis (17 August 1996)
SkyMorph: 3-D Sky Catalog ASTEROID FOLLOW-UPS 1998 MQ images 1 hour apart on 19 July 1997
SkyMorph: 3-D Sky Catalog POTENTIALLY HAZARDOUS ASTEROIDS 1999 AN 10 on DSS, 26 January 1955, found with SkyMorph Moving Target Detection
SkyMorph: 3-D Sky Catalog NEARBY STAR PROPER MOTION
SkyMorph: 3-D Sky Catalog SUPERNOVA DISCOVERIES 24 March 1998 and 18 February SN 1999am
SkyMorph: 3-D Sky Catalog QUASAR LIGHT CURVE
SkyMorph: 3-D Sky Catalog PLANS Two new 1.2-m telescopes come into NEAT service. MSSS 1.2-m now operational. Palomar Oschin 1.2-m scheduled to come online in late limiting V ~ 20 mag Sky coverage/data rate increase by factor of ~9 Object catalog, merged and permanent, with improved utilities Moving Target Detection temporal baseline extended with other online catalogs