Hi there,
I am writing this post on behalt of Dieter Husar, who wrote me the following today:
(freely translated by me)
More than 20 years after my discovery of the main belt asteroid "2001 LD18" at the IAS-Obsevatory on Hakos (Namibia), I now succeeded in discovering a new NEO (Near Earth Object) in the night from July 2 to 3, 2022. Again the observations were made on Hakos. This time, however, remotely at a relatively small telescope of SkyGems (https://skygems-observatories.com/): with the 8" hypergraph there (f/2.8). This telescope has a huge field of about 2x3 degrees and still a resolution of 1.3 arcseconds per pixel (camera: QHY600M).
The discovery of 2022 NC has now been confirmed by numerous observatories and was published last night by MPC (Minor Planet Center at Harvard University) in M.P.E.C. 2022-N27 at 02:21 UT.
The brightness of the object was 19.4 mag.
An absolute magnitude H=25.2 has been calculated for the object. This corresponds to a diameter of about 25 to 60 meters (depending on the reflectivity of the surface, which of course is not known yet).
In its orbit the object approaches the Earth's orbit up to 0.0052 AU (which is about 770000 km). So about twice the distance to the moon.
The discovery of 2022 NC is a big surprise for myself, because I didn't expect to have the chance for a new discovery nowadays. This is certainly due to the excellent conditions at Hakos in Namibia, but is equally due to the fantastic telescope (my thanks go here explicitly to Lukas Demetz) and the novel evaluation software ("Tycho" by Daniel Parrott).
Of course, the discovery would not have come about without intensive observing activity (especially of the objects on the NEOCP list of the MPC). The discovery was a by-catch while trying to observe an already known NEO. Here the mentioned software Tycho with the method of the "Synthetic Tracking" was used. With an apparent motion of the object of about 4 arc seconds per minute and a brightness of only about 19.6 mag, a detection would not be possible otherwise.
Hamburg, July 5, 2022
Dieter Husar
For reference:
MPEC: https://minorplanetcenter.net/mpec/K22/K22N27.html
