28.8.2007

Asteroids Found by Bulgarian Astronomers Acknowledged

The Center for small objects in the Solar system in Harvard, USA, acknowledged the three new asteroids found last week by Bulgarian astronomers in the Capricorn constellation.

This announced the University center on space research and technologies at the Physics faculty of Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”, cited by Darik radio.

The objects are temporarily labeled as 2007 PN28, 2007 PQ2 и 2007 QD2 and are situated in the main asteroid zone. They circle between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter with periods respectively 4.7, 3.6 and 5.4 years.

In 2005 the Bulgarian astronomers found the asteroid 2005UT12, which was the first since 18 years, noticed by Bulgarians.

Since then despite the lack of state funding the young scientists have found seven space objects.

At the moment the astronomers from the observatory “Star society – MPC A76” and their colleagues from the national observatory “Rojen” conduct additional observations for specifying the characteristics of the new objects.

The team, which made the discoveries includes E. Mihaylova, Ch. Kaldiev and their supervisors F. Fratev and Ya. Shopov.

Source: new.bg