SPACEWATCH^® Project

Lunar and Planetary Laboratory
The University of Arizona
Tucson, AZ

The Spacewatch 1.8-meter and 0.9-meter telescopes
on Kitt Peak, 45 miles southwest of Tucson, Arizona.

SPACEWATCH^® is the name of a group at the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory founded by Prof. Tom Gehrels and Dr. Robert S. McMillan in 1980.  Today, Spacewatch is led by Dr. Robert S. McMillan.  The primary goal of Spacewatch is to explore the various populations of small objects in the solar system, and study the statistics of asteroids and comets in order to investigate the dynamical evolution of the solar system.  CCD scanning studies the Centaur, Trojan, Main-Belt, Trans-Neptunian, and Earth-approaching asteroid populations.  Spacewatch also finds potential targets for interplanetary spacecraft missions, provides followup astrometry of such targets, and finds objects that might present a hazard to the Earth.

CCD-scanning observations are conducted 20 nights each lunation with the Steward Observatory 0.9-meter Spacewatch telescope and the new Spacewatch 1.8-m telescope, both on Kitt Peak.

The 1.8-meter telescope near the 0.9-meter allows us to search 0.7 magnitudes fainter. To complement the deep penetration of the 1.8-m, we have put a mosaic of CCDs on the 0.9-m telescope. This permits us to cover sky at least six times faster than the pre-2002 system.