The Asteroid/Comet Connection's
daily news journal about
asteroids, comets, and meteors

Today's issue status: done

• News briefs – meteor news
• Risk monitoring – JPL has posted 2004 DC
  & NEODyS & JPL have removed 2004 CK39
  

Cover: This image of C/2002 T7 (LINEAR) [link|alt] by Rent-a-scope proprietor Arnie Rosner, working remotely from his home in southern California Sunday, shows the two tails now being displayed by the comet. This is an LRGB image composed of ten one-minute exposures per color filter, all made with one 12" (0.3m) telescope, plus a 15-minute exposure tracked on the comet's motion to capture the luminance channel using another 12" telescope, both at New Mexico Skies. Stars appear as multicolor streaks.

Meteor news:  There are additional reports in Australian media today about yesterday morning's fireball seen across western New South Wales. These reports include differing expert opinions on why various colors were seen: Parkes Champion-Post, Goulburn Murray ABC, and Shepparton News.

Many mainstream news sites today are carrying an Associated Press wire story about yesterday's meteoroic bowling ball meteor news, such as at USA Today.

Risk monitoring 18 Feb.

The Wednesday Daily Orbit Update MPEC has a set of observations of 2004 CK39 from KLENOT in the Czech Republic last night, and today both NEODyS and JPL removed their impact solutions for this half-kilometer object.

Update:  JPL has posted 2004 DC, which was announced today in MPEC 2004-D05 as discovered Monday morning by LINEAR in New Mexico and confirmed this morning at Calar Alto and Sabino Canyon observatories in Spain and Arizona. JPL estimates this object's diameter at just under 0.9 km. (0.56 mile), calculating its absolute magnitude (H) at 17.9 vs. the Minor Planet Center's H=18.6.

The work at Calar Alto was by Martin Buchmann, Matthias Busch, and Felix Hormuth, who are on a five-day NEO recovery run with the Madrid Observatory 1.52m telescope, similar to a 2001 effort.