He has been an asteroid tracker himself. Calif. He joined 29 other top science students from around the world in listening to college lectures, photographing asteroids and developing a program to track their orbits. The results of the students' calculations will be recorded at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Astronomers believe there are millions of asteroids floating around the solar system but only 2,000 have been cataloged so far. They range in size from small moons to boulders.
Scientists believe they are made of stony material and metals such as iron and nickel.
The majority of asteroids orbits the sun in a belt between Mars and Jupiter. Jachowski was on a team of students who pointed a telescope in the general direction of 2 Pallas, which is not visible to the naked eye, and took time exposures. The data the students collected differed by no more than 1 percent from the most recent numbers recorded on 2 Pallas. That could be the result of error or an actual change in orbit, said Jachowski. Asteroids change orbits and need to be tracked constantly, he said.