2023-11-03

Our first asteroid discovery: 2023 TG27

While we observed some apparently new objects before we got our observatory code, this is the first time an object we submitted received a provisional designation. It's got a really unusual, inclined orbit. We weren't looking close to the ecliptic, where most main belt asteroids are, but pretty far south on the celestial sphere.

This encourages us to look further where not many people are already looking yet: pretty far south. Here a more detailed description from our discoverer, Divye:

On the night of October 7, 2023, as I analyzed the random fields acquired earlier that morning, I detected an object with an apparent magnitude of greater than 21, moving towards the north-east with a positional angle of 28 degrees.

The astrometric observations (with the object temporarily designated as DRS100 by me) were submitted to the MPC.

Subsequently, Sam got to work, computing the object’s ephemerides – tracking its motion across the sky and acquiring multiple recovery observations dated October 8, 10, 12, 14, and 19 2023 respectively, thereby increasing the length of the observation arc and refining its orbital parameters.

On October 19, 2023, the MPC officially recognized the object via M.P.S. 1974530, assigning it the status of a newly discovered asteroid and provisionally designating it as 2023 TG27.

What’s more – as per the current orbit (which shall refine further as it gets observed more in the future), we suspect it to be an unstable, outer main-belt asteroid in a 2:1 mean-motion resonance with Jupiter, existing in the Hecuba gap. It may remain in its current orbit for a few million years, before being flung into another orbit that may cross/ intersect with the orbit of Mars and/ or Jupiter. More details about this here: Wikipedia/Hecuba-gap_asteroid

Going forward, we hope to continue observing it in the future, which can go on for many, many years to come, at least until it receives a permanent designation. The issue here is that due to its highly eccentric orbit, it will only be visible near its perihelion in the southern hemisphere, every ~5.8 to 6 years, while it remains unobservable at an apparent magnitude of greater than 23 for the rest of its orbit. This is probably amongst the reasons why it remained undetected for so long. Hence, we shall also try to precover/ recover it in existing/ upcoming survey images.

2023 TG27 in the JPL small-body database

DRS - Deep Random Survey

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