Near-Earth Asteroid Tracking

NEAT was the successor to the Palomar Planet-Crossing Asteroid Survey (PCAS).

History

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 a CCD camera and computer system for the GEODSS telescope. The CCD camera format was 4,096 × 4,096 pixels and the field of view was 1.2° × 1.6°.

Beginning in April 2001, the Samuel Oschin telescope (1.2-metre-aperture [3.9 ft] Schmidt telescope at Palomar Observatory) was also put into service to discover and track near-Earth objects. This telescope was equipped with a camera containing 112 CCDs each 2,400 × 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 was discovered on August 24, 2001 by NEAT.

An asteroid was named in its honour, 64070 NEAT, in early 2005.