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Asteroid (132 798) Kürti

How it all happened ....

When I started to search for new asteroids in SkyMorph archive back in 2006, I had no idea at all that in a short time I would name a new asteroids, neither that between orbits of Mars and Jupiter there would move a minor planet named after me. Both are reality now!

In november 2008, the Committee on Small Body Nomenclature of the International Astronomical Union (CSBN) officially accepted the name Kürti for asteroid 132 798, previously known by its provisional designation 2002 PU167: (132 798) Kürti.

The name was suggested by Marco Langbroek, Dutch amateur astronomer who discovered this asteroid on NEAT images in SkyMorph archive. I was honoured by this.

Naming citation for asteroid

Naming citation was published in Minor Planet Circular nr. 64313:

(132798) Kürti = 2002 PU167               Discovered 2002 Aug. 8 by NEAT at Palomar

Stefan Kürti (b. 1960) is a Slovakian amateur astronomer with a focus on a minor planets. Among his discoveries are two near-earth objets. The name was suggested by M. Langbroek.



Orbit plot for (132 798) Kurti in the Solar System

poloha asteroidu v priestore
Credit: M. Langbroek


Orbital elements for (132 798) Kürti

 excentricity e = 0.0915638
 semi-major axis a = 2.569002 AU
 perihelium distance q = 2.3337745 AU
 inclination i = 4.61174 °
 longitude of the
ascending node
Omega = 131.12609 °
 argument of perihelion   omega = 117.52157 °
 time of perihelion passage t = 2018 Jun. 17
 >period P = 4.12 years


Minor planet (132 798) Kürti is a Main Belt asteroid, with its orbit between planets Mars and Jupiter. Estimated diamater of asteroid is 2.17 kilometers.

Combination of discovery triplet images of minor planet (132 798) Kürti taken on 8. Aug. 2002
discovery image of asteroid Kürti
Credit: NEAT Archive

Notes: on the same triplet you can also find asteroid 2002 OG32. I found it during preparation of this photo for my web page. Marco Langbroek probably didn´t noticed it at the time of his hunting. So he "left" its discovery for me. As it was possible to find another 2 nights positions, the minor planet got provisional designation 2002 OG32.

Similar situation happened also with discovery images of the asteroid Langbroek. There you can also find unidentified object, that I missed during my search. But Marco couldn´t find another positions for it, so it is still uncatalogized. But sooner or later it will be surely identify by one of the big surveys ...

Update: since my discovery of this asteroid more than a year ago MPC still got only data of 2002 OG32 I found on NEAT images. Meantime FindOrb software was improved a bit and I got some more practise with precovery work too. So I tried to check whether I could find more positions for this minor planet. And I found! This time I not only extended the observational arc in 2002, but I added another positions from 2001. This new data sent to MPC improved orbital solutions and MPC could linked it with more observations from their data, so from 2 weeks arc now it is object with 10 oppositions and with U=0. So 2002 OG32 should be numbered soon.

2011 May 30