On Christmas Eve the Catalina sky survey spotted an object that had not been seen before. Shortly after McDonald observatory in Texas confirmed the object and further observations were needed to help nail down it’s orbit.
We had clear skies on Christmas night so I checked the Minor Planet Center NEO page to see if there were any possible targets and sure enough the object, provisionally called UY31A3B, was within the range of my equipment. It wasn’t until Stephen’s Day that I managed to find it on my images and produce the astrometry and send in my observations.
Tonight in MPEC 2013-Y47, the object has been designated 2013 YZ13 and my observations which helped with the orbit are listed.
13 observatories provided data on this object. 2 of those are amateur observatories on the Island of Ireland.
Here’s a plot of the objects orbit. The Earth is the blue dot, and the asteroids current position is the red dot, the Sun is in the middle.
