RESEARCH CREDITS

• Awarded the official Site Code 918 by the Minor Planet Center (Harvard/Smithsonian, Cambridge, MA) to contribute to asteroid observations in the international database

• Participates in NASA’s Spaceguard Project

  • Contributed over 2000 NEOCP (Near Earth Object) observations plus several thousand additional MBA (Main Belt Asteroid) observations.

  • Given discovery credit for 25 main belt asteroids; one of them officially named after the State of South Dakota

  • Given re-discovery credit for 1 near-earth asteroid (NEA) 1987QB that had been lost for 15 years

  • Helped to establish the first published orbital elements for 120 newly-discovered near-earth objects (NEO’s)

  • Re-identified two objects as comets, that had been previously incorrectly designated as asteroids

• Provided ground-based astrometric observations in support of the NASA/JPL STARDUST and DEEP IMPACT space missions.

• Collaborated with Dr. Vishnu Reddy of the University of North Dakota to establish rotational light curves on numerous main belt asteroids, as well as NEO’s, as a part of Dr. Petr Pravec’s Binary Asteroid Survey Program through Andrejov Observatory, Czech Republic. As part of this project we were awarded discovery credit for 3 Binary Asteroids (astroidal moons)

PUBLICATIONS

• S Higley, Dr . Paul Harderson, R. Dyvig, SHAPE AND SPIN AXIS MODELS FOR 5 ASTRAEA, 24 THEMIS, 105 ARTIMUS AND 2 PALLAS REVISITED, The Minor Planet Bulletin, 2007

• P Pravec, A.W. Harris, R. Dyvig, V. Reddy, et al, Spin Rate Distributions of Small Asteroids, Icarus 197, Pg. 497-504

• International Astronomical Union Circulars (IAUC) 2000-2010. Thousands of individual astrometric and photometric observations