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

Today's issue status: done

• News briefs – southwest meteor, W. Australian fireball & comet now in northern skies
• Risk monitoring

Cover: Erich Meyer took advantage of last night's lunar eclipse to pick up the dim (mag. 21) and fast-moving 2004 HG12 at Linz Observatory in Austria. Just large enough to be categorized as "potentially hazardous" (JPL H=21.97), it had been reported only once since April 22nd, back on the 27th, and goes out of view this week. Twenty 60-second exposures are stacked on the object's motion, so stars appear here as bumpy streaks.

Southwest meteor:
All-sky cameras at Sandia National Lab in Albuquerque, N.M. and on Jim Gamble's roof in El Paso, Texas 220 miles (350 km.) due south, both caught a bright meteor at 1:10am this morning. Below is Jim Gamble's composite image of the event in the northwest quadrant of the sky, shot from a camera pointed down at a hemispherical mirror (description). The A/CC-assembled animation has parts of frames from both cameras, reoriented so the left-hand Sandia view

Images courtesy of Sandia National Lab & Jim Gamble

with full Moon looks south (west is right) and the El Paso view looks north (west left). Sandia's Quicktime movie is available (744 Kb), as well as another from 1:56am May 2nd (621 Kb, temporary links).

W. Australia fireball: The Australian Broadcasting Corporation today reports speculation that the April 30th Perth meteor (report) may have landed in the ocean 100 km. west of Geraldton.

Now in northern skies: Bill Yeung caught comet C/2001 Q4 (NEAT) at Desert Eagle Observatory in Arizona "just 10 degrees above SW horizon" at 8pm MST (not MDT) last night. This 3-sec. exposure (18" f/2.8 ST10XME) shows signs of what have been called dust "shells," "waves," or "hoods" in images from the southern hemisphere (see Lovejoy and Masi and Mallia). Clay Sherrod also reported C/2001 Q4 last night from Arkansas by telescope and binoculars. See SpaceWeather.com finder chart and a Space.com article today.

Risk monitoring 5 May

As with yesterday, no objects with impact solutions are reported in today's Daily Orbit Update MPEC.