refemnce frame radio source shows a parison polnts, as will be pmvlded by de Vegt Chr., Zacharias N., Johnston K.J., stellar appearance on the plates. Using our reference frame prwramme Is re- 1891, Adv. Spece. RB. 11,133. the quoted reduction model, a m.e. of quired for a more detailed conclusive Johnston K.J., Russell J.L, de VVegt Chr., unR weight for the plate solution of analysis. Zacharias N., Hindsley R., Hughes J., c0.1 arcsw: could be obtained. The fi- Jauncey D.L, Rwnolds J.E, Nieholm G., Ma C., 1931, Pmc. IAU Cdl. 127,123. nal FWJ2000 position, based on 3 Acknowledgements de vwt Chr., 1991, Astmph*. Space Sci- plates, Is erne ln,3 = P~OC.IAU COII+ 100. RA(32000) 7h 50m 52.051'; The author wants to thank H.E. +12' 6 Vegt Chr., 1989, Conference on Digitired DEC(J2000) 31 ' 04.84" Schuster and 0. Reipurth of ESO for Sky Surveys, Geneva Bull. Inf. CDS 97, Using the corresponding Vtsl posi- their continuous help with the observing 21. tion from (Ma et al., tQ90), the system programme. Flnanclal support by BMFT de Vegt Chr., Winter L, Zacharias N., 1992, diffwence In 'the sense "optical minus under grant 100001 8-3 (HIPPARCOS) is Dlgitked Qptleal Sky Sump = Astrophys. radlo" then is: gratefully acknowledged. Spaca Sc, Ub. 174, 115 (Kluwer hd. DAcWEC) = +0.073 ar~ec; Publ.). OOEC = M.01 arcsac References Wlnter L, da Vegt Chr. SMnbach M., Zacharias which Is in good agreement with earlier NU, 1992, IAU Inf. Bull. 87 (Jan. 1992), 7, N., 1W2,ibd. p. 123. results (Johnston et at., 1985) and the Resolution 4. Johnston K.J., de Vegt Chr., Florkowski D., recently quoted flrst prellmlnary results A & A, 1092, Asiron. Astrrrphys. 25B, No. 1, Wade C.M., 1985, A J. 90,2390. of a HIPPARCOS-FIG comparison tn (May I), speclat HIPPARCOS Vol. Ma C., Shafler D., de Vegt Chr., Johnston, that sky region (Undegren, 1992). HOW- Froeschlb M., Kwalevsky J., 1982, Asrm. K.J., Rusdl J., 1994 A J. 9Q, 1284. ever, a dense grid of some 100 corn- As&@@. 11689. Undegren L., 1992, ESA SP-349, in press.

The ESO Minor Planet Sky L. D. SCHIWADEL, Astronomisches Rechen-lns titut, Heidelberg, Germany

The European Southern The many thousands of observations It is interesting to note that in the very was established in 1962 to operate the at ESO have inevitably produced quite a near future ESO is likely to rank fifth powerful La Sllla observatory for the few discoveries. However, there is a long (behind Heidelberg, Crimea, Palomar benefit of many fields of and way from the detection of a new solar and the Anderson Mesa Station of Low- astrophysics. Only a few programmes system object until it can be definitively ell Observatory) on the list of the most were directly concerned with the survey numbered and named. The new planet successful minor-planet discovering ob- of the solar system and the discovery of has to be observed in - at least - three servatorles. In the ranking list of the minor bodies like comets and minor oppositions before it can be numbered. most successful discoverers of minor planets. In many cases, observations of Therefore, the majority of new detections planets of all times, Henri Debehogne these objects were made only as valu- remain in a "dormant" stage in the Minor now occupies the 13th glace - one able by-products of other campaigns. It Planet Center's computer files. In some place ahead of the famous visual planet was especially the wide-field tete- cases it is possible to identify new posi- hunter A. Charlois in Nice, who detected scopes, the 1-rn ESO Schmidt and the tions with planets observed earlier; this some 99 planets between 1887 and 40-cm GPO , which yielded shortens the process. Nowadays, it is a 1904. an enormous amount of positional data. rare exception when a newly discovered The right to name a minor planet During the last decades ESO has always planet can be quickly identified with a essentially belongs to the discoverer. As maintained a leading position in the long series of prior observations. can be seen from Table 1, only a small world, as far as the number of minor The statistics show that until July fraction of ESO discoveries honours planet observations is concerned. 1992, some 186 ESO discoveries have ESO astronomers. This has to be done In 1988, Commission 20 of the IAU reached the status of "established", i.e. by other colleagues, and there are in established a special study group to elu- numbered, minor planets. Table 1 re- fact a lot of names which together con- cidate the meanings of minor planet cords these objects in ascending order stitute a kind of "ESO minor planet sky". names.Thls endeavour, which comprises together with the name (or preliminary While it is very easy to extract all ESO a lot of data for the first 5012 minor designation), the year of discovery and successes from the data base, it is near- planets numbered until the end of 1991, the discoverer(s). Whereas the great ly impossible to find among the 4,000 has now reached completion {L.D. majority was found by Belgian as- exlsting minor planet names those Schmadel, Dictionary of Minor Planet tronomer Henri Debehogne during spe- which have been accorded to ESO offi- Names, X+687 p., Springer-Verlag ,1992). cial surveys for minor planets, most cials, staff astronomers, etc. Since all information in this work has others ware found by chance, malnly The list in Table 3 gives all those been archived in a computer-readable with the Schmidt telescope, and during which are rnentloned in the book about data base, it is very easy to extract the various ESO atlas projects. A total of the ESO history, recently written by material which directly or indirectly per- 16 astronomers earned discoverer Adriaan Blaauw. Still, it cannot be con- tains to ESO. t have here used the data merits; they are shown in Table 2 to- sidered to be a complete compilation. It base and some recently published, addi- gether with the overall numbers of dis- shows, however, that it is not very ex- tional material to illustrate the "ESO coveries and co-discoveries (in paren- aggerated to speak about the ESO minor planet sky". theses). minor planet sky!