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

Today's issue status: done

• News briefs – SCN move, planetary defense, 2004 Darn Wide & tiny FMO
• Risk monitoring
  – NEODyS has removed 2004 DM44

Cover: When the Asteroid/Comet Connection first went onto the Web two years ago today, one of the biggest minor object stories was the amateur-discovered 153P/Ikeya-Zhang [link|alt], a comet then designated C/2002 C1 that was on the edge of naked-eye visibility. This image, used with permission, was made on March 20th at Sormano Observatory in Italy with a ten-second exposure by Francesco Manca, Pierangelo Ghezzi, Augusto Testa, and Marco Cavagna.

SCN site move:  The European Spaceguard Central Node (SCN) Web site has moved to a European Space Agency server with its Priority List, observing campaigns, and other important resources for NEO observers. Tumbling Stone also went with the move. With the old server address gone, a bunch of SCN and Tumbling Stone links spread around the A/CC site are presently dead.

Planetary defense:  SpaceRef.com has posted some of David Morrison's E-mail NEO News notes from last week's AIAA Planetary Defense Conference, titled "Mitigation Proposals" and "Societal Issues." Astronomy Magazine also has daily notes from the conference, from NASA astronomer Bill Cooke.

2004 Darn Wide:  The Yale Herald has an article from yesterday about 2004 DW, "Yale professor and colleagues discover planetoid" (see A/CC Major News Index for more info).

Tiny FMO:  MPEC 2004-D46 issued early today UT announced 2004 DA53, a fast-moving object (FMO) on the order of 10 meters/yards wide (H=28.0) that the European Spaceguard Central Node Priority List rates as "Urgent" and notes will go out of view Wednesday. It was discovered by LINEAR in New Mexico early Thursday and confirmed over the next night by Great Shefford and Powell observatories in England and Kansas, and was caught again last night by Great Shefford. The MPEC has a note from Kyle Smalley that "Close approach to Earth was 0.0033 AU on February 24.25," which is just under 1.3 lunar distances.

Risk monitoring 28 Feb.

The Saturday Daily Orbit Update MPEC carries observations from Powell Observatory in Kansas of 2004 DM44 from yesterday morning and 2004 DV24 from the last two mornings (Thursday and Friday). Today NEODyS removed 2004 DM44 and slightly raised its overall risk ratings for 2004 DV24. At last check, at 4pm in Pasadena, JPL hadn't yet updated its risk assessments with today's new data.

Note the news item above about the SCN Priority List and observing campaigns page URL changes.