La Cañada Observatory, is an initiative by Juan Lacruz, the observatory started astrometric operations in the summer of 2002, it is registered as station J87 in the Minor Planet Center of the International Astronomical Union.

The Observatory also participates in the studies on minor bodies promoted by the Group on Meteorites, Minor Bodies, and Planetary Sciences of the Institute of Space Sciences (CSIC-IEEC).



Sunday, July 31, 2011

New asteroid designation 2011 OJ18

LC00224  K11O18J, This observatory has found 130 designations so far.

NEOCP Confirmations, 2011-July-30

2011 NP= 17TA260 This seems the recovery of a Mars crosser.
2011 OC18 = 17TB163 New Amor object
Reference : MPEC 2011-O70

Monday, July 25, 2011

Confirmation of NEOCP object 2011 OG

This object posted on the NEOCP moving at 3"/min the longest exposure to get the object image un trailed was only 20 seconds, at magnitud around 19V was quite challenging for my 0.40 m telescope, staking three sets of 20 images each the object was quite obvious with a good signal to noise ratio to perform astrometry. Also the PC's clock was synched with ntp protocol to a time server of the Paris observatory to an accuracy better than .1 sec. This is the first time I contribute confirming a discovery by the F51 Pan-STARRS-1 at Haleakala. Looking at the dispersion of the photometry so far I'd say this may be a fast rotator asteroid, further photometry would be interesting.

The orbit resulting from the observations so far is that of an unusual mars-crossing object with a semi-axis a=2.65, high eccentricity e=0.49 and high inclination i = 25.

Reference : MPEC 2011-O28 : 20011 OG