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

Today's issue status: done

• News briefs – precovery, discovery, Deep Impact + bits & pieces
• Risk monitoring
  – NEODyS has removed 2004 MX2

Cover: The second of three large near-Earth asteroids discovered in the last two months, 2004 LJ1 is just a point of light in a vast sea of stars imaged by Rafael Ferrando June 13th at Pla D'Arguines Observatory in Spain. Each frame is a 60-second exposure (north up, east left) and the object's apparent motion is northward. From its brightness, 2004 LJ1's diameter is estimated to be on the order of 3.34 km. (2.07 miles), second largest of the three recent biggies as well as the only one with a potentially hazardous orbit. For more about 2004 LJ1, see a news thread up through the June 14th cover.

2003 WR21 is the diagonal trail at center found by Christian Kjaernet in a scanned 24 Oct. 1990 plate from Mt. Palomar. ©Copyright California Institute of Technology.

Precovery:  Rob Matson has forwarded to A/CC an important result from Christian Kjaernet of Norway, who is learning his way around astronmical archives and reported positions for 2003 WR21 from scanned 24 October 1990 plates from the Mount Palomar 1.2m Oschin Telescope. This potentially hazardous asteroid, estimated to be on the order of 425 meters wide, had had an observation arc of only 206 days until, Matson notes, this archive work extended “the arc from seven months to 13-1/2 years. Not bad for his first NEA precovery!”

Discovery:  MPEC 2004-M45 today announces 2004 MO4 as discovered by Andrea Boattini et al. Tuesday night at CINEOS in Italy. From its

brightness (H=24.6), it is estimated to be roughly 40 meters/yards wide. It will fly past Earth at 9.7 lunar distances on July 7th.

Deep Impact news:  The Deep Impact mission has posted its June newsletter with an interview with Monte Henderson, deputy project manager at Ball Aerospace. And he writes the mission update, telling about moving the now assembled and stacked flyby and impactor spacecraft from the clean room to various testing facilities at Ball to learn its exact center of gravity, to test solar array deployment, and to pass through a variety of environmental tests that will continue into the Fall. During all this, the flight system is also being exercised. “Our launch period opens on December 30th, and we will be ready.”

Bits & pieces:  Purdue University has a news release from yesterday, “Dark days doomed dinosaurs.”

The Planetary Society has a report from yesterday from the morning JPL news conference about first conclusions from the June 11th flyby of Phoebe by

bits & pieces continued >>

<< bits & pieces continued from panel 1

the Cassini spacecraft as it arrives at Saturn. More info.

The Maui News has an article from June 22nd about the Pan-STARRS prototype 1.8m telescope and how it will require removing nearby radio/TV towers which are already interfering with present telescopes. If left operational, they would "fry" the Pan-STARRS revolutionary CCD camera. And it notes that the project will map the equivalent of the first multi-year Palomar sky survey “every four or five days.” See also news June 20th.

AP and UPI wire stories today update different aspects of decision making about how to service the Hubble Space Telescope.

Risk monitoring 24 June

The Thursday Daily Orbit Update MPEC (DOU) carries observations of 2004 MX2 from early yesterday from Powell Observatory in Kansas and Farpoint Observatory in Kansas, and from Great Shefford Observatory in England this morning. Today NEODyS removed its impact solutions for this half-kilometer object.

The DOU has 2004 MC from Powell Observatory yesterday morning, and today NEODyS very slightly lowered its low-risk assessment for this small object.

2004 MS1 doesn't have new observations reported.

Update:  JPL has updated on 2004 MX2, lowering its overall risk ratings.