Articles

Bruce Betts

The Planetary Society Shoemaker NEO grants celebrate their 15th anniversary of helping to find and track near Earth asteroids. Here's a quick review of the program, and updates on our four multiple-grant winners.

Bruce Betts

TPS Shoemaker NEO Grant Winner Gary Hug hunts near Earth objects from his back yard in Kansas. NPR's Morning Edition picked up on this fascinating story.

Bruce Betts

Evidence continues to pile up that the Rio Vichada structure in Colombia is indeed the largest impact structure in South America.

Jaime Nomen

With a new CCD camera configured to shoot rapid, short exposures bought with a Planetary Society Shoemaker NEO Grant we caught near-Earth asteroid 2012 DA14.

Jaime Nomen

In spite of some bad weather conditions during the first part of this year, the new camera bought with funds from a Planetary Society Shoemaker Near Earth Object grant helped us to discover and confirm ten new near-Earth objects.

Bruce Betts

In 2010, The Planetary Society awarded $33,285 as part of its Gene Shoemaker Near Earth Object (NEO) Grant Program. The grants were made to a group of international researchers to find, track, and characterize potentially hazardous NEOs.

Charlene Anderson

Visualization can help the brain comprehend what words and numbers can struggle to covey. There's a YouTube video posted by

Emily Lakdawalla

Amateur astronomers, get your proposals in for this year's round of Shoemaker NEO Grants!

Emily Lakdawalla

Amir Alexander has just posted an update on the activities of the most recent winners of the Shoemaker NEO Grants.

Bruce Betts

Our past Shoemaker NEO grant recipients have once again shown themselves to be a hardworking and enterprising group.

Emily Lakdawalla

Are you a serious amateur astronomer who enjoys the challenge of following up on the discoveries of faint near-Earth objects?

Amir Alexander

It was January of 2004 when the elegant curve of the Vichada first caught the attention of geologist Max Rocca of Buenos Aires. Could the course of the river have been shaped by the circular outlines of an impact crater? Rocca decided to find out.

Emily Lakdawalla

Having discovered its first asteroid on January 12, Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) has now officially discovered its first comet, P/2010 B2 (WISE).

Bruce Betts

Based on analyses of previously unstudied telescopic data, NASA scientists have released new predictions for the path of the 300-meter-diameter asteroid Apophis.

Bruce Betts

A few days ago I had the honor of announcing the latest winners of The Planetary Society's Gene Shoemaker NEO grants here at the Planetary Defense Conference in Granada.

Bruce Betts

In 2009, The Planetary Society awarded $18,300 as part of its Gene Shoemaker Near Earth Object (NEO) Grant Program. The grants were made to a group of international researchers to find, track, and characterize potentially hazardous NEOs.

Bruce Betts

More from the Planetary Defense Conference: Shoemaker Grant Winners

Bruce Betts

Our 2007 Shoemaker NEO Grant winners have been extremely busy over the past two years. Take for example Quanzhi Ye of Guangzhou, China: He was only 18 when he received the award but already the principal investigator of the sky survey at the Lulin Observatory in Taiwan.

Amir Alexander

Bruce Betts

Amateur astronomers play a critical role in retiring the risk of impact from near-Earth objects. When the Shoemaker NEO Grant program began in 1997, the focus was on finding previously undiscovered objects one kilometer in diameter and larger. Thanks to professional NEO survey programs like LINEAR (the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research program run by MIT’s Lincoln Laboratories) and the Catalina Sky Survey (run from the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory), the goal of discovering the vast majority of large NEOs is within reach, and the focus of the Shoemaker NEO Grant Program has shifted to astrometric follow-up and physical studies.