Discovery of the first Aten asteroid (2062 Aten)
Descubrimiento del primer asteroide Atón (2062 Aten)
- Date
- 7 de enero de 1976 · confidence high
- Place
- Palomar Observatory, California, United States
- Credited to
- Eleanor F. Helin
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
What was discovered
Helin discovered 2062 Aten, a near-Earth asteroid with a semi-major axis under 1 AU and an aphelion above 0.983 AU, which gave its name to an entire new dynamical class of near-Earth asteroids. Today nearly 3,000 Aten-type asteroids have been catalogued, several of them potentially hazardous.
What it led to
- Dynamical classification of Aten-type asteroids
- Cataloguing of thousands of near-Earth objects
- Planetary defense programs
Built on
- Near-Earth asteroid search programs