Campo Imperatore Near-Earth Object Survey

To search for near-Earth objects (NEOs), concentrating activities at small solar elongations. The objective is to optimize a ground-based system towards the discoveries of:

• Aten asteroids
• Interior-Earth Objects (IEOs)

Although the NEO discovery rate grew significantly from 2001 to 2005, knowledge of bodies with small semimajor axis remains largely incomplete (Atens) or totally incomplete (Inner-Earth Objects). Most search programs concentrate their efforts near the opposition region where it is difficult if not impossible to find these objects.

Aten asteroids are also very important because numerical simulations have shown that they have the highest frequency of close encounters with the Earth. Sometimes Atens can evolve into orbits completely inside that of the Earth and vice versa. Thus, there are bodies that can come very close to the Earth, but are very difficult to observe from the ground.

The second goal of CINEOS is to provide rapid astrometric data for:

• Follow-up of NEOs in urgent need of observations.
• Recovery of NEOs at future apparitions.
• Follow-up of small bodies belonging to other unusual orbital classes.

The survey activity is carried out mostly at the beginning and near the end of the night, while part of the middle of night time is usually available for the follow-up work. As a targeted follow-up system, CINEOS takes advantage of the combination of the relatively faint limiting magnitude and large field of view (probably the largest in the world for this activity). Follow-up can be provided up to magnitude 21, occasionally to 22 on the best nights.

Coordination of the follow-up work will be accomplished within the Spaceguard Central Node facilities. An essential side of the work is to choose targets that cannot be done elsewhere very easily during the epoch of the observing run.