Hi Jiashuo,
Thank you for your offer to help and for taking the time to look at the data. I wrote my own (quick and dirty) python script to check the ITF for observations that match with my observations. It's a very rough script, so I might take you up on the offer to perform ITF to ITF matching if you have a better tool in hands.
Do you work for the MPC or one of the big surveys to have access to the timestamps?
Regarding 2024 XA14 and 2024 XQ15, I'm really surprised by what you wrote. For 2024 XA14, I contacted someone who works at the Catalina Sky Survey before submitting my data. It was my very first submission of a potentially new discovery, and I wanted to make sure that I was not submitting a false discovery. So, I shared my measurements from several nights with David at CSS and he confirmed that the detection was real. He also looked in the recently archived images from G96 and was able to find the object, which had been missed by the automatic pipeline processing. He then took care of submitting the observations from G96 and the linking information. That's why the data from G96 was submitted several days after the actual observations.
Once the linking was done, this object was linked to earlier observations from F51, so I assumed that they had "discovered" it before me. Otherwise, that would mean that the observations from F51 were submitted several days after the images were taken, which seems odd to me.
Somewhat similar for 2024 XQ15, I'd be really surprised if the observation from G96 were submitted after mine (but since I don't have access to the timestamps, I can't know for sure).
I did notice something strange with another observation, and maybe you can help me figure out what happened. The object is: 2025 BN9. It is a Jupiter Trojan which did not have a designation yet when I first noticed the tracklets in my images. I followed this "new" objects over several nights and kept submitting data until it was finally linked (I did submit some linkage information but I don't know if it was actually used or if the linkage occured automatically). Initially, there were observations from 3 previous oppositions linked to this object, but only one night per opposition (so, I figured that I had a good chance of becoming the discoverer). After ~24 hours, many more observations were linked to it, but these observations were not in the ITF. Does that mean that the pipeline went back to the actual images and detected the object which had not been initially reported (probably because the SNR was not good enough)? Any idea of what might have happened here?
Best,
JF
Hi, JF.
I'm just an amateur astronomer (a high school student).
You can use MPC Explorer to preliminarily check timestamps. The steps are: input the asteroid's designation, select "Observations," then check the "ObsID" (actually, I mixed up some details in my previous message. You can see my corrected information and explanations below. I feel ashamed of my unintentional mistake....)
MPC Explorer: https://data.minorpl...r.net/explorer/
The ObsID consists of a string of letters and characters. The order is determined by comparing characters from the first position onward: 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th... in sequence, sorted as 1, 2, 3...9, A, B, C...Z, a, b, c... If the first character is identical, compare the second character, and so on. For example, see the case of 2024 XQ15 below.
Regarding 2024 XA14, according to the ObsID, the earliest submission was from F51 in 2021. So F51's submission indeed preceded that of W05. Based on my previous explanation, the discovery is currently credited to F51 in 2021.
For 2024 XQ15, based on ObsID comparisons: G96 submissions predate W05.
All ObsIDs share identical first two characters ("LI"), so we compare the third character. For example, "LlZCIW2J0000GTEO0100001Dp" vs. "Lle3F9Bg0000GTne010000003." Following the sorting rules, "Z" (uppercase) precedes "e" (lowercase), so G96's observation LlZCIW2J... is the earliest submission. Under MPC's new rules, discovery credit currently goes to G96.
For 2025 BN9, Perhaps your assumption is correct—they likely retrospected historical data.
I also checked forum data: JFG0027=2025 BU12 is currently credited to W05. I’ll examine other ITF data later, though I’m unsure if I’ll successfully find linked observations.
Best regards,
Jiashuo Zhang
Edited by Jiashuo Zhang, 24 February 2025 - 01:17 AM.