Three articles in tomorrow's edition of the journal Nature tell about results from Voyager 1. At some 90 times the distance between Earth and Sun (90 AU), the spacecraft may now have passed a "termination shock" boundary where the Solar wind interacts strongly with the interstellar medium. The main articles, which disagree on this point, are available for purchase. The third piece, an overview, is available online: "Planetary Science: Over the edge?"

The forward boundary of the Sun's atmospheric bubble (the "heliopause") is believed to be at 130 to 150 AU. That would be beyond the Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt as understood today, but there are periodic comets and a few known asteroidal objects that range well past that distance, and an "Oort Cloud" of minor objects is predicted out around 50,000 AU.

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KAIT-TV in Jonesboro, Arkansas reported yesterday about an event just before 10pm local time Monday night — a bright light in the sky (described in various reports as white, yellow, blue, or greenish) and "a large 'boom.'" The Blytheville Courier News also yesterday had an article, "Meteor lands in northeast Arkansas": "The impact caused homes in Craighead and St. Francis counties to shake, and resulted in several small fires in the Jonesboro area." That fires would result is very unlikely, and there are no further such reports.

This morning's reporting includes an Associated Press (AP) wire story (see links above right) that "Researchers from the Center for Earthquake Research and Information in Memphis, Tennessee, are searching for the object in Poinsett County." However, KAIT-TV subsequently reported that a spokesperson for the center had told them, "no such search is underway [but] the Center is doing in-house research on the incident [and] preliminary evidence leads [them] to believe the meteor may have exploded 'somewhere between Newport and Marked Tree.'"

The AP story mentions that "An astronomer at the Arkansas Sky Observatory on Petit Jean Mountain saw several bright meteors shooting across the sky Monday night while watching a comet."

As mentioned in recent A/CC reports, Arkansas had two memorable meteor events in 1930 — the Paragould and Miller falls.

Update:  See Nov. 7th news

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Uttar Pradesh event: There is further news of Sunday's possible meteor fall in Uttar Pradesh, India (see A/CC's first report). NDTV.com has a report today, "Meteorite lands in UP village." And a Press Trust of India story at rediff.com today, "Object that fell from the sky was a meteorite: Scientists," reports on a preliminary examination by a scientist from the Geological Survey of India.

Hermes: KXAN-TV Austin, Texas has a brief item from yesterday about 1937 UB Hermes, interviewing Judit Ries of McDonald Observatory's Planetary Science research group.

Solar storm: SpaceWeather.com is reporting that the Sun "unleashed another powerful solar flare on Nov. 4th" that may prove to be as large or larger than the largest ever observed from space, going back to 1976 (see SOHO's November 4th Hot Shot X-whatever Flare!). More aurora could result, but there isn't a forecast yet for mid-latitudes tonight and tomorrow.

Arecibo Observatory celebrated its 40th anniversary last Saturday with an invitation-only event at the facilities in Puerto Rico. See celebration sites posted by the observatory and by the Cornell University News Service.

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Risk monitoring
5 Nov.

Update:  The JPL NEOs Removed from Impact Risks Tables page is showing that 2003 TH2 was removed at 8:15pm this evening, Pasadena time, which was early on the 6th UTC.

JPL today still hasn't updated its 2003 TH2 risk assessment with yesterday morning's new Arecibo radar data from October 30th.

As of today, 2003 UM3 has been dropped from A/CC's daily Summary Risk Table (above right) and Consolidated Risk Tables (CRT) as this object is no longer under active observation and analysis, and is effectively lost. From an observing arc of less than 25 hours more than two weeks ago, NEODyS is showing that UM3's next Earth approach may come eight years from now.

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