Yan, thanks for heading this up.

I’d like to suggest another topic for the “current issues” section. We need more follow-up observations to really determine orbits of many of the small bodies as they are discovered so that they don’t become lost. Many Near Earth Asteroids are being detected by the surveys and given preliminary designations but their orbit determination is too poor to find them again at their next opposition. I just did a quick check of all NEAs discovered in 2006 (a year picked randomly but intended to be far enough back for some follow up observations to have occurred since then). The median data arc for all NEAs discovered in 2006 is only 34 days. Roughly a quarter have orbit uncertainty codes of 8 or 9 (0-9 log scale where 0 is good).

Josh Hopkins

From: Yan Fernandez [mailto:yrf@me.com]
Sent: Thursday, December 30, 2010 8:51 PM
To: sbag.population@pc93.lpi.usra.edu
Subject: EXTERNAL: [SBAG Population Identification & Characterization] population section draft of roadmap due on Jan 14

Hi everyone -- It's time to start thinking again about the 'population
identification and characterization' section of the SBAG Roadmap.

When we last left this back in August, I presented to SBAG a brief
outline of our section. I'm attaching that presentation to refresh
everyone's memory. It's a short PDF.

The outline upon which this SBAG presentation was based is online
(at http://www.psi.edu/~sykes/sbag/roadmap/outline_population.html ),
but this is the outline from July 28. So it's a bit old. I've taken
that outline and updated it, expanding it a bit, and incorporating
the comments that were sent to me in July and the comments I got
from the SBAG meeting participants. The new, updated outline --
dated December 31 -- is attached. Let's consider this the current
version.

The next step is to convert this outline into a real document. So
right now I'm asking for volunteers to tackle various parts. If
you have a desire to write or help write some fraction of the
document, let the group know --- and please let us know soon!

The section draft is due on January 14, ie. only about 2 weeks away.
Then the draft will be open for community discussion until the next
SBAG meeting in the end of the month. I'm scheduled to give a talk
at that meeting about our section on January 25.

Thanks!
--Yan

--

Dr. Yan Fernandez, Asst. Prof. of Astronomy

Department of Physics, University of Central Florida

yan@physics.ucf.edu, http://www.physics.ucf.edu/~yfernandez