Associazione Romana Astrofili

157 FRASSO SABINO 42,22945555N 12,81150555E 465m s.l.m.

Precovery di 2003 KN18

Rob Matson located PHO 2003 KN18 as the trail in this Digitized Sky Survey 2 (DSS2) scan of a 3 May 1989 plate from the 1.2m U.K. Schmidt Telescope at Siding Spring, and he was accessing SkyMorph to work the next predicted position when the service went down. By the time he could get back, the 3 and 8 May 1989 positions had already been reported in yesterday’s Daily Orbit Update MPEC.

This work was coded to Fabio Anzellini of the Associazione Romana Astrofili (ARA), whose membership includes several archive sleuths. All this followed Sunday’s announcement of 2003 KN18’s recovery (news), which yielded an orbit calculation good enough to help archival “precovery” work.