Encyclopedia > Beijing Schmidt CCD Asteroid Program
The BAO Schmidt CCD Asteroid Program or Beijing Schmidt CCD Asteroid Program or SCAP is/was a project organized on May 1995 by the Beijing Astronomical Observatory and funded by the Chinese Academy of Science. Its purpose was to discover Near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) and comets. Near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) are asteroids whose orbit intersects Earths orbit and which may therefore pose a collision danger, as well as being most easily accessible for spacecraft from Earth. ...
The instrument that SCAP used to detect near-Earth objects was a 60/90 cm Schmidt telescope. Equipped with a 2048x2048 CCD camera, this telescope was installed at the BAO Xinglong station in Hebei province, China.
Discoveries
From 1995 to 1999, SCAP detected 1 new comet, 2460 new asteroids and observed 43860 other asteroids, making it the fifth largest asteroid observation project at that time. Five of the asteroids it discovered were NEAs, two of which were considered potentially hazardous asteroids (PHAs).
For some reason, about half of its discoveries are credited by the Minor Planet Center (MPC) to "BAO Schmidt" and the other half to "Beijing Schmidt". It is extremely likely that these are one and the same. The Minor Planet Center operates at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO), which is part of the Center for Astrophysics (CfA) along with the Harvard College Observatory (HCO). ...
List of Notable objects discovered
Name
Provisional Designation
Discovery Date
Remarks
7072 Beijingdaxue
1996 CB8
February 3, 1996
asteroid named after Beijing University
7800 Zhongkeyuan
1996 EW2
March 11, 1996
asteroid named after the Chinese Academy of Sciences
13651
1997 BR
January 20, 1997
1st potentially hazardous asteroid (PHA) discovered by SCAP
29552 Chern
1998 CS2
February 15, 1998
asteroid named after the Chinese mathematician Chern Shiing-shen
31065 Beishizhang
1996 TZ13
October 10, 1996
asteroid
1998 CS1
February 09, 1998
potentially hazardous asteroid (PHA)
Zhu-Balam
C/1997 L1
June 03, 1997
comet named after SCAP head Jin Zhu and co-discoverer Dave Balam (Univ. of Victoria)
Recent Status
In a conversation with Space.com contributor Michael Paine, SCAP head Jin Zhu said that the program's alloted time to use the Schmidt telescope was significantly reduced to make room for the observatory's other projects.
External links
WELCOME TO Xinglong Station of NAOC webpage for the station where SCAP was conducted. It also shows a picture of the Schmidt telescope that SCAP used in its research.
BAO ASTEROID OBSERVATIONS: FROM ASTROMETRY TO PHYSICAL RESEARCH <abstract>
According to Yang Jiexing, an astronomer who is in charge of the project at the Purple Mountain Observatory in Nanjing, the new observatory is being built in the Tieshanshi State Forest Park in Xuyi County in the eastern Jiangsu Province.
Here the Schmidt telescope, which is smaller than the telescope that will go in the new observatory, is equipped with a CCD camera to observe minor planets under the SchmidtCCDAsteroidProgram (SCAP).
The BAO SchmidtCCDAsteroidProgram or BeijingSchmidtCCDAsteroidProgram or SCAP is/was a project organized on May 1995 by the Beijing Astronomical Observatory and funded by the Chinese Academy of Science.
The instrument that SCAP used to detect near-Earth objects was a 60/90 cm Schmidt telescope.
Equipped with a 2048x2048 CCD camera, this telescope was installed at the BAO Xinglong station in Hebei province, China.
Feeds |
Contact