Has anyone noticed this? If you Search Brightest Asteroids, you get a list of 100 selected asteroids, ranked by brightness. However, an asteroid NOT in that pre-selected list will never appear in the search, even if it is brighter than some of them at the time. For example, today (2024 October 24) minor planet (1036) Ganymed is near Earth and shining at mag. 9.1. Only (4) Vesta outshines it at mag. 8.3. ALL the other hundreds of thousands of asteroids are of equal or dimmer magnitude! But Ganymede does not appear in that list. That is because most of the time it is much dimmer and only occasionally gets this bright. One solution wound be to have a search list much bigger than 100 but only list the 100 brightest at the time of the search. What do people think?
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bruce lamoreaux It is interesting that Ganymed does not show on the "Brightest Asteroid" list. You are likely correct that the default database lists Ganymed at a dimmer magnitude. Ganymed does show in the planner at 9.1 tonight. Filter the planner to Asteroids - mag (8.6-13.4) - and limit the constellation to Pegasus, if anyone would like to go asteroid hunting. The four that show are Iduna, Ganymed, Atami and Eric. These would be some fun targets tonight.
Bruce
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Dave Chapman Interesting. I thought I was a “power user” but I did not know about the Planner before today.
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bruce lamoreaux The planner is a useful tool. Handy to build an observation list for the evening.
Where did you hear about Ganymed? I had to Wiki to see why it was as bright as it is. It's closest approach is tonight. After tonight it is heading out and not likely to get this close again while I am alive. Thanks for the heads up.
Here is a snip from Wiki. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1036_Ganymed
Ganymed is the largest of all near-Earth objects but does not cross Earth's orbit. The S-type asteroid has a rotation period of 10.3 hours. In October 2024, it is predicted to approach Earth at a distance of 56,000,000 km; 35,000,000 mi (0.374097 AU).[15]
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bruce lamoreaux Here it is tonight and then in December.
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Dave Chapman I am a frequent user of the robotic telescope Ralph at the Burke-Gaffney Observatory (BGO) at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax, Νova Scotia, Canada. A fellow observer imaged Gamyned and I wondered why. I looked into it and discovered that it was a NEO undergoing a closest approach. It is unusually bright, so I was surprised it did not show up in the Brightest Asteroid list.
One of my projects is to image the asteroids named after members of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, many of whom are my friends.
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bruce lamoreaux Well Dave, You sent me down a couple of rabbit holes. The telescope Ralf looks to be dang cool and I've just learned a lot about the IAU and naming asteroids.
I am going to follow the observations, there is a variety of interesting targets.
Bruce
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