WHY NEA OBSERVATIONS AT FRANCISQUITO?
When a suspected NEA is first discovered – say by one of the large research telescopes involved in the Spaceguard Survey, the Minor Planet Center immediately posts a worldwide call for confirmation observations. The survey telescopes need to continue their broad survey of the sky and generally cannot afford the time to go back and make repeat observations of prospective NEA discoveries. The Minor Planet Center depends on other observatories, both professional and non-professional to make the critical confirmation and follow-up observations. The initial discovery observations define a very short arc through the sky, and there are a large number of possible orbital paths that could be fit to the same set of observations. With each successive set of observations, the number of possible orbital solutions decreases, until eventually a single 3-dimensional orbital path is uniquely defined. This process usually takes a few days of observations to a few weeks, until hopefully the NEA’s orbit i
