HISTORY

                    PAST AND PRESENT ACTIVITY

The Pianoro Observatory, designated observatory "610" by the Minor
Planet Center, is a very active private facility. It is located in
the town of Pianoro, about 17 km south of the city of Bologna
in northern Italy. Latitude,longitude and elevation of the site are
respectively +44ø 23' 29.6", 11ø 20' 35" East, 180 meters. Despite
the vicinity of Bologna, the sky is a reasonably dark, especially
towards the southern side.

As retired Professor of high school Math and Phisics, I developed
a keen interest in minor planets many years ago. In 1976 , I joined
the asteroid observing program at San Vittore Observatory
(code 552), the first such program in Italy. This activity, done
with Tech Pan films hypered with hydrogen, kept me busy for about 15
years, and heightened my interest in photographic chemistry.
From 1993 to 1994, more powerful developers than the classic D-19
were tested in the course of an asteroid search program with the
67-cm Schmidt telescope at the Asiago Astrophysical Observatory 
(with Andrea Boattini and Maura Tombelli).

In 1995, I bought a 25-cm f/6.3 Schmidt-Cassegrain and equipped it
with a HySIS22 CCD camera, with a matrix of 768 x 512 pixels,each
pixel measuring 9 x 9 microns. This camera is equipped with a Kodak
KAF-400 chip, with a quantum efficiency peak of 42%.In effect, this
is my observatory. In October of the same year, I started my
astrometric activity with the observations of (433) Eros. Since
then , I have produced almost 10,000 astrometric positions of minor
planets , becoming the most prolific Italian observer since 1997.
I usually observe in binned mode , with pixels being of 18 microns.
This gives me a scale of 3.4 arcsec/pixel when I observe with a
focal reducer (25-cm f/4). This scale still allows me to get good
astrometric data.

There are the fields in which I have concentrated my efforts:

a) Follow-up of Near-Earth Asteroids.

b) Follow-up of numbered asteroids that have been poorly observed 
   over the last few years.

c) Follow-up of main-belt objects that are close to being numbered.

d) Photometry of asteroids.

When I started this program the limiting magnitude of my system was
only about 17.0 V, giving me the opportunity to concentrate only
on programs (b) and (c). In the following few months I improved my
results, partly due to better telescope tracking, and partly due to
a better image calibration procedure.
Right now I can take exposures of 4 minutes without using guiding
corrections and this allows me to reach magnitude 18.0 V routinely.
Also I  have discovered 32 main-belt asteroids ad nine of them
already have permanent numbers.

Astrometry of comets
My activity involves 21 different comets, with 297 positions.

At present, I collaborate with the Minor Planet Center and the
Spaceguard Foundation for the follow-up of Near-Earth Asteroids
brighter than magnitude 18.0 V.


                                    VITTORIO GORETTI
                                     

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