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LBT detects one of the faintest NEOs ever observed thanks to a collaboration between INAF and ESA

The Large Binocular Telescope (LBT), of which the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF)  is a main partner, has successfully observed asteroid 2014 KC46 in one of the faintest Near-Earth Object (NEO) recoveries ever performed. This challenging observation, which pushed the limits of the telescope down to a visual magnitude of 26.3, was carried out on the nights of 28 and 30 October 2014 by a new collaboration between the Italian LBT team and the NEO Coordination Centre of the European Space Agency.
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Focus on: ESA OGS

The ESA Optical Ground Station has quickly become a major asset for the NEO Coordination Centre, thanks to the many nights devoted to observing asteroids. It is located at an altitude of 2400 m on the slope of a volcano, in Tenerife, hosted at the Observatorio del Teide - Instituto the Astrofisica de Canarias.
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Lost NEOs (part 1): how to find them in the sky

The observational component of NEO science is an extremely important part of the impact mitigation effort, since observations are the input data for all the computational models used to predict future collisions. This post will summarize our effort to ensure that enough data are obtained, especially on the most important and challenging objects, during the short time when they are observable.
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2014 RC - a close fly-by coming up

In the evening of 07 September 2014, the newly discovered asteroid 2014 RC will have a very close fly-by of just above 30000 km to our planet. The object is estimated to be between 10 and 30 m in size. While the fly-by is very close, there is no chance that the object will hit the Earth.
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Happy Birthday NEOCC!

Today the NEO Coordination Centre (NEOCC) celebrates its first year of activities. On 22 May 2013 the Centre was formally inaugurated at ESRIN by Thomas Reiter, ESA Director of Human Spaceflight and Operations. Since then, the Centre has regularly provided information and data on NEOs through its main services updated on a daily basis (Risk list, Priority list, Close Approaches and Physical Properties) and through its technical news service.
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Getting ready for asteroids

With a mandate from the UN, ESA and other space agencies from around the world are about to establish a high-level group to help coordinate global response should a threatening asteroid ever be found heading towards Earth.
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The Recovery of 2009 FD, a Potentially Hazardous Asteroid

The first recovery campaign carried out by the ESA NEO Coordination Centre in coordination with ESO, using the Very Large Telescope (VLT) (VLT telescopes on the Paranal mountain in Chile (credit: ESO)) turned out to be a success. Before the campaign, asteroid 2009 FD was ranked among the top five objects in the risk list.
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TOTAS survey finds its first comet

In a fruitful collaboration between ESA and a group of amateur astronomers, the first comet was discovered by the so-called TOTAS survey. The comet is called P/2014 C1 (TOTAS) and has an orbit between Jupiter and Mars. TOTAS stands for 'Tenerife Observatory Teide Asteroid Survey'.
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Observing 2013 NJ: A study case

If an asteroid is discovered which could come very close to Earth, it is important to coordinate observational activities quickly to better know its precise flyby distance.This is illustrated by the following case of near-Earth asteroid (NEA) 2013 NJ.
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2013 TV135 update: no longer in the impact risk list

On 8 November 2013 asteroid 2013 TV135 has been removed from the Risk Page. The non-zero impact probability spotted by monitoring systems just after its discovery (on 8 October 2013) dropped essentially to zero. The bulk of astrometric data collected by astronomers during exactly one month of observations helped to improve our knowledge of its orbit, that eventually turned out to be a safe one.
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Space oddity: the mystery of 2013 QW1

Last month, ESA's near-Earth asteroid coordination centre triggered a series of European observations that confirmed an unknown object was, in fact, of human origin. The confirmation was the Centre's second such success in recent months and demonstrates the effectiveness of the Agency's asteroid-monitoring activities.
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Happy birthday, NEAS!

The number of known Near-Earth Asteroids has just overcome 10,000 units! This result represents an important achievement if one thinks that over the one hundred years between 1898 (when the first NEA, 433 Eros was discovered) and 1998 only about 500 NEAs had been found, while the current NEA discovery rate is about 1,000 per year.
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Gaia for NEOs

Although Gaia's primary mission goal is the precise measurement of star positions and not observing NEOs, nevertheless it is likely to produce a significant contribution to NEO detection. This is due to the peculiar way its on-board telescopes will scan the sky, reaching solar elongations as low as 45 degrees.
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A WISE decision

The data gathered by the US WISE mission have been released as public domain on 14 March 2012. This release provides improved calibration and processing algorithms.
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A sense of something strange

While the sky becomes more and more continuously scanned by ground and space-based NEO surveys, discovering objects in unusual orbital configurations represents the new frontier. Their dynamics translates into peculiar visibility conditions thus calling for smart observation strategies. Tunguska-class (i.e. 30-60 meter size) objects in orbits closely resembling that of the Earth turn out particularly elusive due to their faint appearance and the long synodic period.
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Target asteroid tracked by european teams

In a recent close-ish flyby, asteroid 2002 GT was studied in detail for the first time by a network of European astronomers. The observations were coordinated by ESA's asteroid centre in Italy, and should prove crucial for a future spacecraft rendezvous
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