Supporting Grant Agencies

The work at Ondrejov is supported by the Grant Agency of the Czech Republic, Grant 205/05/0604.

The Planetary Society has awarded the Gene Shoemaker Near Earth Object Grants to David Higgins and Gianluca Masi, see The Planetary Society's Near Earth Objects Page.

David Higgins, of Canberra, Australia, is an amateur astronomer who has been awarded the grant by The Planetary Society's 2005 Gene Shoemaker NEO Grants programme for the purchase of an SBIG CCD camera and filter wheel to allow him to utilise the full automation tools already in place at his observatory and increase the number of effectively utilised observing hours by a factor of 2. David operates a privately owned observatory, built toward the end of 2002 in a suburban backyard. The observatory is currently fitted with a 14" Meade LX200GPS operating at f/4 permanently mounted in a roll top observatory. Further information on his observatory and program can be found on his web pages here.

Gianluca Masi, Italy, is a PhD student in Astronomy at the University of Rome "Tor Vergata". His main research interests are in NEO photometry and astrometry. The 2005 Gene Shoemaker NEO Grant award will be used for improving the 0.8m telescope installed at the Campo Catino Astronomical Observatory (www.campocatinobservatory.org). It will become one of the largest instruments used for systematic photometry of NEOs.