Stefan Kürti´s Astro Web

Konkoly observatory (461)

My cooperation with professionals

Konkoly Observatory at Piszkéstető Mountain, Hungary is the biggest professional observatory in Hungary. It is on the top of Mátra Mountains. Besides of many other researches conducted from Piszkéstető, there is also asteroid observation programm led by astronomer Krisztán Sárneczky. Observations are carried out by CCD imaging via the 0.6 m Schmidt-telescope and the 1-m Ritchey-Chrétien-Coudé telescope.

Lately a new Apogee CCD camera was added to the Schmidt telescope which resulted a new 70´x 70´ field of view, much bigger than it was with previous set up. This large field of view is very suitable for asteroid hunt and follow-up work. During September lunation they discovered 64 new asteroids. A new CCD camera produce a lot of new data and in order to measure all aquaired data intime and to work out a follow up observations I was asked to help them.

The first months I worked directly on the observatory, since 2011 March I started to check aquired images from home. I work with Astrometrica and check moving objects manually, later Krisztián began using the software for initial inspection and I do "subsequent" checking for asteroids overlooked by software. The human eye detects about 1 magnitude fainter objects than computer and also pick up those, where one of its three positions coincides with the star in the background.

That it is not useless work, we found out in June 2012, when I discovered our first Near-Earth asteroid 2012 LG11, which did not find Astrometrica, despite it was bright object of 18th magnitude.

Below you find the list of asteroids i discovered with Krisztián Sárneczky at Piszkéstető Observatory.

Asteroids discovered at Piszkéstető Observatory (461)