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

Today's issue status: done, updated

• News briefs – Dawn mission & MRO news
• Risk monitoring
  – JPL has removed 2004 HD2 & reposted 2004 HW

Cover: This unusual view of comet C/2004 F4 (Bradfield) comes from Jaime Nomen from Sunday morning using a new robotic 0.25m telescope at the Observatorio Astronomico de Mallorca (OAM) for which not all functions are yet available, including a flatfielding procedure, thus the vignetting. What makes it truly unusual is that, within C/Bradfield's tail at upper right (the small fuzzy spot directly below the "ts" in "Objects"), you can see comet C/2003 T3 (Tabur) — last year's only amateur-discovered comet together with the only one so far this year. The two are about 48 arcmin apart in this view.

Dawn mission:  NASA's Dawn mission to the Main Belt has posted a new edition of its newsletter, reporting that "hardware is beginning to appear," and that "an independent power and mass margin review was successfully conducted" April 13th.

MRO news:  The Socorro, New Mexico El Defensor Chieftan has an article today, "MRO telescope is a design prototype for the Hubble," telling how the central 2.4m telescope of the Magdalena Ridge Observatory (MRO) interferometer (multiple telescopes viewing as one larger instrument) was developed for the Hubble Space Telescope and was later planned to be used by the military. At MRO it will serve both military and astronomical purposes. "Once in operation, the telescope will be used mainly to study small bodies in the Solar system," such as a NASA/Ames $251,000 proposal to study "near-Earth object hazards."

Risk monitoring 28 April

The Wednesday Daily Orbit Update MPEC (DOU) carries a set of positions for 2004 HK33 from Sandlot Observatory in Kansas yesterday morning. Today NEODyS slightly lowered its overall risk ratings for this object while cutting its solution count from 25 to 10, with the earliest now in 2019 rather than 2010.

Also reported in the DOU from yesterday morning are these objects listed presently only by JPL: 2004 GA1 from LINEAR in New Mexico, 2004 HD2 from Table Mountain Observatory in southern California, and 2004 HM from Sandlot. Four of the eight objects listed with impact solutions and currently in view are not reported in today's DOU.

Updates:  JPL's new assessment for 2004 HK33 cuts its impact solution count and lowers its overall risk ratings. The new assessment for 2004 GA1 is slightly lower and JPL has now removed 2004 HD2. Later, JPL very slightly lowered its 2004 HM risk assessment, and reposted 2004 HW with a single impact solution based on new data received ahead of tomorrow's DOU.