Near-Earth Asteroid Tracking ( NEAT ) was a program run by NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory , surveying the sky for near-Earth objects . NEAT was conducted from December 1995 until April 2007, at GEODSS on Hawaii (Haleakala-NEAT; 566 ), as well as at Palomar Observatory in California (Palomar-NEAT; 644 ). With the discovery of more than 40 thousand minor planets , NEAT has been one of the most successful programs in this field, comparable to the Catalina Sky Survey , LONEOS and Mount Lemmon Survey .
6-633: NEAT was the successor to the Palomar Planet-Crossing Asteroid Survey (PCAS). The original principal investigator was Eleanor F. Helin , with co-investigators Steven H. Pravdo and David L. Rabinowitz . NEAT had a cooperative agreement with the U.S. Air Force to use a GEODSS telescope located on Haleakala , Maui , Hawaii . GEODSS stands for Ground-based Electro-Optical Deep Space Surveillance and these wide field Air Force telescopes were designed to optically observe Earth orbital spacecraft. The NEAT team designed
12-579: A CCD camera and computer system for the GEODSS telescope. The CCD camera format was 4096 × 4096 pixels and the field of view was 1.2° × 1.6°. Beginning in April 2001, the Samuel Oschin telescope (1.2 metres (3 ft 11 in) aperture Schmidt telescope at Palomar Observatory ) was also put into service to discover and track near-Earth objects. This telescope was equipped with
18-464: A camera containing 112 CCDs each 2400 × 600. This was the telescope that produced the images leading to the discovery of 50000 Quaoar in 2002, and 90377 Sedna in 2003 (published 2004) and the dwarf planet Eris . In addition to discovering thousands of asteroids , NEAT was also credited with the co-discovery (recovery) of periodic comet 54P/de Vico-Swift-NEAT and of the high proper motion Teegarden's star . The C/2001 Q4 (NEAT) comet
24-543: Was an astronomical survey , initiated by American astronomers Eleanor Helin and Eugene Shoemaker at the U.S Palomar Observatory , California, in 1973. The program is responsible for the discovery of 95 near-Earth Objects including 17 comets , while the Minor Planet Center directly credits PCAS with the discovery of 20 numbered minor planets during 1993–1994. PCAS ran for nearly 25 years until June 1995. It had an international extension, INAS , and
30-508: Was discovered on August 24, 2001 by NEAT. An asteroid was named in its honour, 64070 NEAT , in early 2005. 1996 PW was discovered on 1996 August 9 by a NEAT automated search camera on Haleakalā , Hawaii . It was the first object that was not an active comet discovered on an orbit typical of a long-period comets. This raised the possibility it was an extinct comet or an unusual asteroid. Palomar Planet-Crossing Asteroid Survey The Palomar Planet-Crossing Asteroid Survey ( PCAS )
36-490: Was the immediate predecessor of the outstandingly successful NEAT program . The first NEO discovered by PACS was (5496) 1973 NA , an Apollo asteroid with an exceptional orbital inclination of 68 ° , the most highly inclined minor planet known until 1999. In 1976, Eleanor Helin discovered 2062 Aten , the first of a new class of asteroids called the Aten asteroids with small orbits that are never far from Earth's orbit. As
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