Resources for the "Astrometry of Asteroids" lab

Some notes on using the Astrometry Toolkit from Gettysburg student Brittany Cochran.
A simple method to find the angular velocity of an asteroid addresses on common question which comes up in the CLEA exercise
I've written several descriptions of parallax -- maybe one of these will work for you and your students.
Using pairs of images of asteroid 2002 NY40 taken from two different sites to estimate its distance. This is another description of the project.
A detailed description of how students can measure the distance to an asteroid This is a PDF version of a paper by Smallwood, Katz and Richmond, published in American Journal of Physics, Feb 2004, p. 264. Here's a direct link to AJP version of paper.
The JPL Horizons system can give you lots of information about asteroids and their orbit.

There are several projects one can do with asteroids besides simply measuring their positions, even with a small telescope.

Measuring the rotation period of an asteroid isn't too hard: just take pictures every few minutes for a couple of nights.
- The MPC has a list of asteroid properties including known and not-so-known rotation periods.
- The Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link (CALL) is a good place for information, tutorials, advice and software.

Occasionally, an asteroid will pass in front of a star, as seen from certain places on Earth. Observers in those areas will see the light from the star "blink out" for a few seconds as the asteroid blocks it. Careful measurements of these occultations can reveal the size and shape of the asteroid, and/or properties of the star.
- The asteroid occultation prediction page shows you when and where occultations will occur.
- The International Occultation Timing Association (IOTA) has many useful references and guides.
- The IOTA Yahoo group discusses the latest events and their analysis.