Beijing Schmidt CCD Asteroid Program

Minor planets discovered: 1293 [1]
see § List of discovered minor planets
SCAP was conducted at BAO's Xinglong Station, China, in the 1990s.

The Beijing Schmidt CCD Asteroid Program (SCAP) was an astronomical survey to search for near-Earth objects. It was conducted during the 1990s, at the Xinglong Station in Xinglong County, Chengde, Hebei province, China[2] and resulted in the discovery of more than a thousand numbered minor planets.[1]

Funded by the Chinese Academy of Science, the survey is sometimes also called BAO Schmidt CCD Asteroid Program and NAOC Schmidt CCD Asteroid Program, referring to the Beijing Astronomical Observatory (BAO) and National Astronomical Observatory of China (NAOC), respectively.[citation needed]

The instrument that SCAP used to detect near-Earth objects was a 60/90 cm Schmidt telescope. Equipped with a 2048×2048 CCD camera, this telescope was installed[when?] at the BAO Xinglong station in Hebei province, China.[citation needed]

In a conversation with Space.com contributor Michael Paine, SCAP head Jin Zhu said that the program's allotted time to use the Schmidt telescope was significantly reduced[when?] to make room for the observatory's other projects.[citation needed]

  1. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference MPCdiscoverers20170112 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ "Xinglong Observing Station". 2021-03-21. Archived from the original on 2023-01-23.