asteroids

[aah@nofs.navy.mil]

I note that Jedicke and Metcalfe have an accepted paper for Icarus on
"The Orbital and Absolute Magnitude Distributions of Main Belt Asteroids,"
based on 4 years of data with the 0.9m Spacewatch telescope on Kitt Peak.
They say that "the set of known asteroids is complete to about absolute
magnitudes 12.75, 12.25 and 11.25 in the inner, middle and outer regions
of the belt respectively."  The 'absolute magnitude' is the magnitude at
opposition, in this case referring to the V filter.  So it sounds like there
might be a few asteroids still to be discovered that are within the reach
of the mark III systems.  (paper astro-ph/9801023)
Arne