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

Today's issue status: done & updated

• News briefs – comet risks, observatory news, & meteor news + numbers & names
• Risk monitoring – no news

Cover: Yesterday's Daily Orbit Update MPEC reported observations of small object 2001 TY1 by NEAT's Mt. Palomar telescope in southern California on 6 October 2001, three days before its discovery by LINEAR. Three trailed images were located in the SkyMorph archive by Josep Julia Gomez, who says they are “beautiful images,” as you can see with the second one at left, with object sky motion of 38.06"/min. in PA 50.3°. This work added 3.057 days to what had been a 37.124-day observation arc, most of which is a 22.136-day gap before the last two positions were reported from Mauna Kea. And this work caused the object's MPC orbit U uncertainty rating to go from 6 to 2.

Comet risks:  A report at SpaceDaily today tells about a theoretical threat from undetected ultra-dark comets. Rather than send readers down a long and thin news thread, here's a recap of related news items about this controversial idea posed by Chandra Wickramasinghe and Bill Napier, and promoted again in a 26 October Cardiff University news item.

• “Chance Of A Cometary Impact Re-assessed”
  SpaceDaily 27 Oct.
• “Unseen comets may raise impact risk for Earth”
  Nature 18 Oct.
• “Sedna ‘has invisible moon’”
  Nature 23 Aug. (subscription required)
• “Unique moon may partner Sedna”
  New Scientist 21 Aug.

These reports refer to April news of no moon found orbiting 90377 Sedna (2003 VB12, see report), and to a June 2002 explanation of the mass disruption of Oort Cloud comets. See also July news about theories on how Sedna arrived at the orbit it now travels.

Observatory news:  The Illinois Journal Gazette and Times-Courier has an article today about a new remote-controlled observatory at Eastern Illinois University (EIU) that will be used for teaching and research. And now the

“university will commence a search for supernovas (exploding stars) and asteroids, and will also take part in a study of pulsars.” See also EIU first and second news releases from yesterday regarding tomorrow's observatory dedication.

Meteor news:  The Ironwood, Michigan Daily Globe reported yesterday that Michigan Technolgical University's Seaman Mineral Museum has received “an extraordinary collection of thousands of mineral specimens,” from which it has put on display “an 8-inch slice of the Brahin Meteorite, found in 1810 in Minsk, Byelorussia. [It] is a high-grade pallasite — a rare meteorite type showing an olivine/nickel-iron intergrowth.” See also a museum September 17th news item.

Risk monitoring 27 Oct.

There is no news to report today in risk monitoring, which isn't uncommon during the time of the full Moon. The most recent news regarding other objects with impact solutions came last Saturday, and the only object recently in view that still has impact solutions, 2004 RQ252, is now out of view. There have been no further developments in its risk assessment since October 13th, two weeks ago, so we will stop listing it tomorrow in A/CC tables used to report only active concerns.