Beijing Schmidt CCD Asteroid Program

The BAO Schmidt CCD Asteroid Program or Beijing Schmidt CCD Asteroid Program or SCAP is/was a project organized on May 1995 by the Beijing Astronomical Observatory and funded by the Chinese Academy of Science. Its purpose was to discover Near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) and comets.

Device

The instrument that SCAP used to detect near-Earth objects was a 60/90 cm Schmidt telescope. Equipped with a 2048x2048 CCD camera, this telescope was installed at the BAO Xinglong station in Hebei province, China.

Discoveries

From 1995 to 1999, SCAP detected 1 new comet, 2460 new asteroids and observed 43860 other asteroids, making it the fifth largest asteroid observation project at that time. Five of the asteroids it discovered were NEAs, two of which were considered potentially hazardous asteroids (PHAs). In 2002, an NEA was discovered near our moon.

For some reason, about half of its discoveries are credited by the Minor Planet Center (MPC) to "BAO Schmidt" and the other half to "Beijing Schmidt". It is extremely likely that these are one and the same.

List of Notable objects discovered

Recent Status

In a conversation with Space.com contributor Michael Paine, SCAP head Jin Zhu said that the program's allotted time to use the Schmidt telescope was significantly reduced to make room for the observatory's other projects.

External links

* [http://www.bao.ac.cn/bao/station/xl/index-e.html WELCOME TO Xinglong Station of NAOC] webpage for the station where SCAP was conducted. It also shows a picture of the Schmidt telescope that SCAP used in its research.
* [http://www.astropa.unipa.it/Asteroids2001/Abstracts/Posters/zhu2.doc BAO ASTEROID OBSERVATIONS: FROM ASTROMETRY TO PHYSICAL RESEARCH ]
* [http://www.space.com/news/japan_spacewatch_000426.html Bigger Telescopes Seek Killer Asteroids] - a Space.com special report by Michael Paine on the search for near-Earth asteroids
* [http://www.china.org.cn/Beijing-Review/Beijing/BeijingReview/99Nov/bjr99-45e-14.htm Asteroid Named to Mark CAS Anniversary] - a Beijing Review article by Li Rongxia on asteroid 7800
* [http://www.spacedaily.com/news/asteroid-00l.html China Builds New Observatory To Detect Near-Earth Asteroids] - a Spacedaily.com article by Wei Long on the Purple Mountain observatory. The SCAP is briefly mentioned here.
* [http://www.permanent.com/a-catalo.htm § 1.8 New Asteroids -- Discovering and Cataloging] describes the groups involved with asteroid detection. SCAP is briefly mentioned here.