2025-08-04 –, Online speaker
MPEC Watch (https://sbnmpc.astro.umd.edu/mpecwatch/) is a utility that digests the Minor Planet Center’s publications to present statistical summaries of the reported observations of small bodies that are of high interest to the community. MPECs, or “Minor Planet Electronic Circulars” (https://minorplanetcenter.net/mpec/RecentMPECs.html), are issued in the form of emails and corresponding website postings, with their own DOIs by the Minor Planet Center for announcing discoveries of objects of interest (like Near-Earth Objects - NEOs, irregular satellites, or comets) and updates to the MPC’s database. MPEC Watch provides a summary of the discovery, follow-up, and first-follow-up statistics by worldwide observatories and surveys, which can be used to demonstrate the effectiveness of NEO observing programs to the community. We will discuss recent and planned upgrades of MPEC Watch, including searchable summary tables, data export options, survey statistics, and object-specific breakdowns.
This work is supported by the NASA Planetary Data System’s Small Bodies Node (NASA 80NSSC22M0024).
