ASTEROID POSITIONS BASED ON THE DUSHANBE PART OF THE FON PROJECT OBSERVATIONS

Abstract

We present the results of asteroid images’ identification and creation of positional catalogs based on digitized photographic observations within the framework of the Northern Sky Survey (FON project). Namely, the cooperation between the Ukrainian Virtual Observatory and the Institute of Astrophysics of the Academy of Sciences of Tajikistan makes it possible to expand this work by involving numerous additional archives of digitized observations and processing services to obtain new original data about the small Solar system bodies. The Dushanbe part of the FON project is represented by about 1570 photographic plates obtained in 1985—1992 at the Gissar As- tronomical Observatory of the Institute of Astrophysics of the Academy of Sciences of Tajikistan. To the moment, their digitization and further scanning processing were completed, and a catalog of equatorial coordinates and stellar magnitudes for all registered objects on the plates was created. In parallel with solving the main task of the project to create a catalog of stars and galaxies, we analyzed the results of processing the plates to search for images of asteroids and comets and to create a catalog of their coordinates and magnitudes. More than 2200 positions of asteroids and comets were obtained with visual magnitudes from 7m to 16.5 m. All positions of the asteroids were compared with the ephemeris. A preliminary analysis of the O-C differences and their comparison with similar results obtained from the digitized observations of the Kyiv and Kitab parts of the FON project are conducted. The authors note some differences in the accuracy of the compared catalogs and also analyze the reasons for this and the possibilities of reducing their impact. In addition, the catalog includes several positions of Pluto and comets that were also identified in the negatives.