Last update:
IAUC 8857 has announced the Lulin discovery, C/2007 N3 (Lulin), on July 18. The comet is discovered by Q.-z. Ye and C.-S. Lin, but the object was reported as an asteroid. As IAU rules, "Lulin" would be selected as the name of the comet. Comet Lulin will reach its perihelion on early 2009 and may be a naked-eye target.
MPEC 2007-N39 announced the first LUSS NEO discovery on July 14. The new Apollo-type asteroid, 2007 NL1, was discovered by Q.-z. Ye and C.-S. Lin on July 11.
On July 19 the name of the survey is switched from "Lulin Sky Survey" (LUSS) to "Lulin Minor Bodies Tracking" (LIMIT). The old name mislead people sometimes and cannot describe our survey precisely, so we decide to change. Another purpose name is "Lulin Minor-bodies Pursuit" (LUMP), but we finally decide to use LIMIT.
The mirror copy of Minor Planet Center's Minor Planet Orbit Database (MPCORB) is now available. The datasets are interchanged over the site of Czech Astronomical Society and are updated daily.
Also the JPG previews of LUSS data archive is partly available, others are under uploading. Now the data from 2007 January 1 to March 21 can be archive. Data in 2006 is under processing and would be available soon.
The archive query tool, Archiving Master, has been put into use yesterday. It supports query in sexigesimal coordinates or SIMBAD resolvable target names. Note now only Raw-FITS are available, but GIF preview will be available soon.
Data archive became available today, a relativity powerful searching tool is under developing.
China Telecom Co. announced the internet service has resumed to 70% of normal rate, and now the net speed between Guangzhou and Lulin has resumed to ~40% of normal rate, so LUSS can be resumed. Normal operation flow will be applied tonight.
Latest MPC full batch brought one more numbered LUSS discovery, (147918) 2006 UU214. (145523) and (145534) will be named "Lulin" and "Jhongda" (for NCU), the citations has been submitted to CSBN.
Due to the strong earthquake occurred to south Taiwan on late December 26, a blackout happened to the submarine cable and very greatly effected the transmission between the mainland and Taiwan. We have to put a temporary stop of LUSS today, the time to restart is upon to the progress of recovery of submarine cable.
As the suggestions from Tim Spahr of MPC, the 4-pass mode has been put into use since today. It'll only applied on Quick Scan Mode (QS). Normal Scan Mode will still use 3-pass in a specific sky field.
The MPC announced the numbering of five LUSS discoveries in the latest full batch. There are (145523) 2006 EM67, (145534) 2006 GJ, (145545) 2006 KA39, (145546) 2006 KU67 and (145588) 2006 PQ17, respectively. The first two numbering asteroids will be named as "Lulin" and "National Central University" as the agreement of the investigators.
(c) Copyright 2006-2007 Lulin Minor Bodies Tracking (LIMIT)