Edgar Wilson award fund missapropriation by SAO's Center for Astrophysics

The Edgar Wilson award, or how the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory’s Center for Astrophysics is scamming amateur astronomers.

Introduction :

The Edgar Wilson award is an award which started to be attributed in 1999, destined to reward amateur astronomers who had discovered a comet in a given year. Little is known about the person of Edgar Wilson, other than he was a businessman living in Kentucky and he had an interest in astronomy.

For many years, the award consisted of a plaque and a sum of 20000 dollars was shared between the various amateur astronomers who had discovered a comet in the past year. I.e. if there was only one comet discoverer that person would receive 20000 dollars, if there were two, each 10000, etc…

See the details in: http://www.cbat.eps.harvard.edu/special/EdgarWilson.html

And the list of recipients of the award in: http://www.cbat.eps.harvard.edu/special/EdgarWilson1.html

The price was administered by the Center for Astrophysics (CfA) which then was the home of the Minor Planet Center (MPC) and the Central Bureau of Astronomical Telegrams (CBAT)

Except that in 1999, the then director of the CfA had the agreement changed so that amateur comet discoverers would still receive a plaque, but SAO would keep the money and in counterpart organize “programs” for amateur astronomers, see: https://www.minorplanetcenter.net/mpcops/documentation/edgar-wilson-award-information/

 

What was in the will of the late Edgar Wilson :

I did put a copy of the original document here (link to be added later)

In it we can read:

So the award always consisted of a sum of money.

Later in the document we read again:

(Oscar Wilson was Edgar’s brother). We also find near the end of the document:

To me and any other normal person :), the terms of the will are absolutely clear. The award is a plaque _and_ a monetary award.

Later we read :

So SAO is supposed to follow the terms of the will, which is that… amateurs should receive money. How much ?

All the money, less “reasonable expenses” incurred by SAO. Having the 1 to 5 plaques made each year, send them by US mail to the person receiving the award, send a pair of emails… As you will see below that meant between 16000 (44%) to 20000(50%) of the money received each year by the SAO. Can this be considered “reasonable” or way too much? I don’t have the typical value taken by various NGOs when they receive funds. I just doubt, and hope it’s not 50% of the money which disappears in the administration of the organization with what’s left applied to the defined goal of the organization.

How much did SAO receive? Here are the amounts received by the SAO over the years (not including 2025).

2024: https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/616162804/202511279349102981/full 35581 dollars

2023: https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/616162804/202411139349101121/full 36994 dollars

2022: https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/616162804/202331219349100233/full 40555 dollars

2021: https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/616162804/202231159349102108/full 32093 dollars

2020: https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/616162804/202121179349101307/full 34316 dollars

2019: https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/616162804/202011629349101046/full 36690 dollars

2018: https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/616162804/201921269349100947/full 34184 dollars

Former years, when the award was attributed normally:

2017 : 37127 dollars

2016 : 37127 dollars

2015 : 40336 dollars

2014 : 39165 dollars

2013 : 37675 dollars

2012 : 38145 dollars

2011 : 37675 dollars

While I don’t have the amount received by SAO from the Edgar Wilson charitable trust in 2025 and 2026, we can imagine it was also in the 36000+ dollars each year.

Apparently then 45 to 50% of the funds received was clearly not enough for the then director of CfA, Dr Charles Alcock, who basically considered that amateur astronomers don’t really need money, and took on his own to modify the terms of the will, so that that proportion increases substantially, amateurs not receiving money anymore, just a plaque. Then of course was the “Organize programs for amateur astronomers, where the programs shall consist of presentations and training sessions from leading astronomers in the field of comets and asteroids. ».

The main problem is that indeed the modification of the agreement, while made “legally” is unreceivable, since it’s quite clear in the original agreement that the award is a monetary award, and that if SAO does not comply with the terms of the award. It clearly states: “On the condition that Smithsonian will conduct a program to administer the Award under the terms set forth in the Will”. Which is clearly not the case anymore.

Moreover, SAO/CfA between 2018 and 2025 never sent any plaque (the amateur comet discoverers scammed by CfA are in a mailing list exchanging information about this situation and none of us has received any plaque, nor were any “seminars” organized). If you look at the amounts between 2018 to 2024, it’s more than a quarter millions of dollars which was “diverted” by CfA in nobody knows what, but clearly nothing corresponding to either the original terms of the will/agreement with SAO, nor the second terms modified unilaterally by CfA. Nothing was done, yet 250413 dollars disappeared (without counting the money received in 2025 and soon in 2026).

At first, I just wasn’t concerned having at that time not discovered any comets. Some amateur friends had received the award in the past. I started to be concerned in 2021 when I first started discovering comets with my friend Georges Attard. But then realized the award was not given anymore, and I somehow believed that it was because the Edgar Wilson charitable trust ran out of funds. I thought the terms had been modified because the fund was running low on money or something of that order. But then I was quite surprised when I was able to find the pages on the propublica.org site. It’s just that SAO was stealing “legally” the money after having modified the terms of the agreement in total disagreement with the intent of the late Edgar Wilson. I then contacted many of the amateur comet discoverers to see if they had received anything, and I can confirm, nobody received plaques or award. Nor were any seminars organized, in order to explain to people who already know how to find comets, how to find comets…

At the beginning of 2026, I sent an email to CfA director Dr Lisa Kewley about the situation, and another person, Heather Williams which replied by a nice email, very likely ChatGPT redacted, explaining that SAO has continued sending plaques to the discoverers, which isn’t true (I know I should have received 8 of them by now), and “The funds associated with the Award remain dedicated to purposes consistent with the program's intent” which is also clearly false. I have all these emails available upon request. I answered pointing out the discrepancy between her email and the reality, then time passed, I sent an email to Heather Williams with copy to director Kewley telling them that it was a clear case of charity fund missapropriation, and asking whether or not they had any intentions to pay amateurs who have discovered comets or not. Then I received another email by Mr Farleigh Earhart, Principal Deputy General Counsel of SAO, explaining that the award has been modified (without mentioning that it was completely contrary to the will of Mr Edgar Wilson) and that was it.

I therefore wrote this web page so that you are informed of the situation, and eventually publish information on astronomy magazines on how CfA consider amateur astronomers.

If you want to have CfA point of view, you can contact:

earhartf@si.edu

Heather.williams@cfa.harvard.edu

Lisa.kewley@cfa.harvard.edu

Now, are they serious?

Turns out, I discovered my first 3 comets as a professional (two from Palomar Observatory in California, one from Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur in France) and in 2003 I left professional astronomy to open a public observatory, and since 2021 have started an amateur search program from my place in San Pedro de Atacama in Chile in collaboration with amateur friends, who happen to be professional computer scientists. So I have a very good knowledge of what it takes to discover a comet these days, both in the professional world as well as an amateur. Our program has discovered 8 comets which should have been awarded by the Edgar Wilson fund.

Comets are not discovered by visual observers anymore. The last comet discovered visually was by the late Don Machholz in 2018. All the other amateur comets were discovered using digital means, meaning telescopes, cameras, computers and software.

Comet discovery requires a good equipment and therefore costly instrumentation, software, luck and perseverance.

Here is the magnitude of comets discovered in 2025 (both amateurs and professionals, mostly professionals)

The first magnitude 12 comet (the point on the lower left) was discovered by Gennady Borisov, and the two other “bright comets” on the lower right where discovered by a space based coronagraph observing the solar corona. It means that if you don’t own a telescope able to reach easily magnitude 18 or fainter, you won’t find any comets except if you are extremely lucky. The magnitude of a object in the sky is its “brightness”. It’s a logarithmic scale. Magnitude 6 is the faintest one can see with the naked eye under a very dark sky. Every difference of 5 magnitudes is 100 times fainter. So a comet of magnitude 21 is basically one million times fainter than the faintest star visible with the naked eye. It means a very faint object, which requires quite a large telescope and very sensitive cameras to be detected.

If you don’t have luck, you will need a lot of perseverance. But in order to increase your luck, you will need powerful instrumentation, which is quite costly, at least for many amateurs who are not fortunate enough to be very rich.

But then, amateur discoveries are very inexpensive compared to the professional programs, which have usually yearly budgets in the millions of dollars, since they need to pay salaries for observers but also for programmers since they all use homemade unix software which needs to be maintained regularly. Most amateurs I know of observe using commercially available software under windows and amateur discoveries are usually hundred of times less costly than professional ones. The two worlds are quite different and apart from one person, I don’t know of anybody who works in a professional observatory involved in the discovery of near earth asteroids and comets who is also using his/her amateur telescope to search for comets from home when not working (David Rankin in Arizona, discoverer of a comet with his home telescope, but also working for the Mount Lemmon asteroid survey at the University of Arizona).

Today there is no way that an amateur who hasn’t spent about 20000 dollars in equipment can try his luck at discovering comets. So how will a “seminar” help amateurs discovering comets? It’s ludicrous. Plus, admitting that such a seminar is held, and is in anyway useful, publish it on youtube and you don’t need to run the same seminar leading to the same conclusion every year. So clearly the CfA administration has diverted the money it should attribute to the amateur comet discoverers, is using it to a completely different purpose than the one clearly specified in the will of the late Edgar Wilson. Even if they were organizing seminars they would in no way help amateur to discover comets. Restoring the award in its original form would on the contrary clearly help amateurs.

In our case, we run one of the two southern hemisphere survey (the NASA financed ATLAS project is the second one). We are using 4 and pretty soon 8 28cm telescope (Celestron RASA), using zwo 6200MM cameras (60 megapixels cameras) on a beefy mount, and so far, I personally spent about 140000 dollars over several years to get this instrumentation working, but without counting manpower and software development. We are trying to make the discoveries in real time (not processing data the following day, but being present behind the computers during the nights). We are currently using 3 powerful GPU computers, one for the confirmation of our discoveries (using a separate 50cm newtonian telescope) and one GPU PC for two cameras. We are quite limited in our search because we are limited by the PCs. If we had for example one PC per camera (instead of one PC for 2 cameras) we could extend our search to faster moving asteroids, and increase our discovery rate, mainly if LSST one day starts to work regularly (LSST discovered only 6 NEOs in 2025, and so far, none in 2026, contrarily to the extravagant publicity they are known for). LSST is not adapted to the discovery of very fast moving asteroids and we need to move in this direction if we want to continue our program. Except… GPU PC are expensive, they require a lot of electric power, which in my observatory is provided by solar installation, which is too very expensive. The person who believes that discovering a comet is very inexpensive need to be informed of the current reality.

Nevertheless, it’s not because we are amateurs that we don’t produce useful discoveries. The main NASA financed programs are located in the northern hemisphere. The only “southern” program is ATLAS which has 2 of its 5 telescopes located in the southern hemisphere (one in Chile, one in South Africa). Here are the discoveries made by these two programs compared to our “amateur” program:

In 2025 these two ATLAS telescopes (which costed millions of dollars to the US taxpayer) discovered 78 near earth asteroids, while our maps program discovered 99 (not taken into account that the telescopes were stopped in January and February).

Should SAO continue to not take care of the Edgar Wilson award?

In the will we also read:

And later:

It’s not in the role of CfA’s Minor Planet Center to attribute comet names. So it seems also logical (reading above) that the institution which should take care of the attribution of the Edgar Wilson award be the Central Bureau of Astronomical Telegrams, maybe in collaboration with members of the Working group of small body nomenclature of the International Astronomical Union.

We, meaning all the amateur comet discoverers who have been scammed by CfA, are asking you to publicize this situation, which shows a total disrespect to the amateur observers which do contribute substantially to the discovery and the follow up of comets and near earth asteroids.

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