Amateur Asteroid Hunting: What's Needed and How To Do It

Asteroid hunting, the name itself evokes a sense of adventure, of exploration! The very idea of being an asteroid hunter inspires images in your mind of discovering a NEA (near-earth asteroid) that may be on the path of human destruction! Visions of you being the one to save humankind in a style reminiscent of the film Armageddon fill your mind! As most scientifically minded people are at least somewhat logical thinkers, you know that visions like that are impractical, highly unlikely, but you cannot help it - after all, you are human. And obviously you are a human who has been captivated by the mystery and lure of nighttime gazing at that. But never mind the illogical hypotheticals - asteroid hunting can be an extremely exciting hobby!

Ceres was the first asteroid to be discovered at the beginning of the 19th century by an Italian monk named Giuseppe Piazzi, and today it is still considered to be the biggest known asteroid at over 900 kilometers in diameter! Compare that to the second biggest asteroid Pallas - at 530 kilometers in diameter, and you get the idea that Ceres is the Goliath of asteroids!

Asteroids - otherwise known as minor planets, are plentiful in the Asteroid Belt between Jupiter and Mars. Though there are tens of thousands of known asteroids in the Belt, their location to each other is spaced out over vast, incomprehensible distances (Debunking another romanticized Hollywood image of spacecrafts dogding and weaving through clusters of gigantic rocks threatening to crush the fragile machine.). The most accepted theory for the extraordinary zone between the two planets is that the asteroids are the remnants of a planet that failed to form properly after the solar system formed due to the gravitational force of mighty Jupiter.

Asteroids usually can be categorized as one of the following types:

1. Carbonaceous (C-Type):

• Albedo of .03-.09
• Make up 75% of asteroids
• Are in the outer regions of the main belt
• Have a composition similar to carbonaceous chondrite meteorites and a chemical composition much like the sun - minus the hydrogen and helium and other volatiles.
  

2. Silicaceous (S-Type):

• Albedo of .10-.22
• Make up 17% of asteroids
• Are in the inner regions of the belt
• Have a composition of metallic iron and iron and magnesium silicates

3. Metallic (M-Type):

• Albedo of .10-.18
• Make up the rest of the asteroid population
• Are in the middle regions of the main belt
• Have a composition of mostly metallic iron