Thursday, January 3, 2008

A NEAT Tribute

On January 3, 1981 an asteroid was discovered by Edward Bowell, of Lowell Observatory. It was named “3267 Glo” to honor astronomer Eleanor "Glo" Helin. “Glo” Helin retired from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in 2002 where she was the principal investigator for the Near-Earth Asteroid Tracking (NEAT) program. Long before her work on NEAT, Dr. Helin began her hunt for asteroids at Palomar back in the 1970s using the 18-inch Schmidt telescope. She spent more than 20 years working on surveys to discover asteroids that pass close to Earth

During her career she discovered or co-discovered 863 asteroids and 20 comets.

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