4 November 2016
Using telescopes on Earth, Gaia’s Ground Based Optical Tracking campaign (GBOT) has been delivering daily datasets, which are used to determine the satellite’s position, since launch. Making use of data that are generated for its primary purpose, the tracking of Gaia, the campaign has now found an additional science application: the
detection of asteroids. Using the astrometric pipeline, several tens of known and unknown asteroids are being detected every night.
Current number of asteroids detected by GBOT in 2015:
(until the 11th of May 2015):
* Known: 1517
* New: 1128
More about the asteroid finding program at :http://gbot.obspm.fr/pub/ast/
More about GBOT’s activities in SyRTE at:http://gbot.obspm.fr/