13 March 2005 - Sunday

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MOS on the Web – Minor object science reporting elsewhere:

  Pacific Northwest event

• "Meteor fires over Northwest," Medford, Oregon Mail Tribune 13 March article: "People all the way from Northern California to Washington reported seeing a fireball light up the sky at about 7:45 p.m. Saturday."
• "Meteor lights up sky over the Lower Mainland 'like a sparkler'," Vancouver, B.C. Province 13 March article: "The heavenly streaker was seen from Sooke to Vancouver, north to Parksville, at Whistler and as far west as Nootka Island."
• "Quake, fireball give area two jolts," Olympia, Washington Olympian 13 March article: "In the Olympia area, the fireball was described as a blazing flash of green or turquoise light with a tail that moved from east to west in the southern sky."
• "Bright object seen, heard streaking across night sky," Salem, Oregon Statesman Journal 13 March article — Note: Although this article doesn't give any such accounts, a few witness reports in other articles do mention an associated sound.
• "Fireball sighted over Pacific Northwest," AP wire story at MSNBC 13 March, also at many other news outlets, mostly in a shorter form
• "Viewer e-mails about object seen in the sky," KATU-TV Portland, Oregon 12 March
• "Flaming Object Over Oregon," KTVAL-TV Eugene, Oregon 12 March article: "Lane County Sheriff's Dispatchers told KVAL that their office received a communication from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA. FEMA believes the object was a fragment from a meteor shower that was expected this week."
• And thanks to Jeff Brower for links to two British Columbia news sites with items today: CKNW-AM in Vancouver and Castanet in Kelowna.

  Rosetta flyby

• Rosetta flyby videos by Herb Raab
• "Moonrise above the Pacific," ESA news release 9 March: "During last Friday's Earth-skimming fly-by, Rosetta's Navigation Cameras captured images looking down and ahead. While cloud formations, coastlines and continents are clearly visible, the best photo shows the Moon rising above the Pacific, taken as the craft headed away from our home planet and out into space." — See also an ESA item from March 7th.
• "Rosetta Buzzes Earth," Sky & Telescope 7 March news item

  Pluto & New Horizons mission

• "Finding Pluto: Tough Task, Even 75 Years Later," Space.com 11 March article: "Pluto is being observed by growing numbers of nonprofessional astronomers... [At magnitude] 13.8 when it arrives at opposition to the Sun on June 14 [this] is very nearly as bright as Pluto ever gets."
• "Pluto's Horizon," NASA 9 March news item: "After launch aboard an Atlas V [in January 2006], New Horizons would cross the entire span of the solar system — in record time — and conduct flyby studies of Pluto and its moon, Charon, in 2015 [and] would mark humankind's first voyage into the "third zone" of the solar system known as the Kuiper Belt." — Note: This item links to NASA's Draft EIS for the New Horizons Mission page. The full draft Environmental Impact Statement, which was issued in late February and has an April 11th public comment deadline, is available as a 6.86Mb PDF. Besides disclosing the parameters of the radiological hazard posed by the mission launch, the EIS gives an overview of the science that is to be gained from the mission and describes its time line, including a 180-hour flyby activity sequence from which it will take more than eight months to transmit the data back to Earth.

  Heliosphere science shut-down

• "Voyager probes in funding crisis," BBC 10 March article
• "Interstellar Pioneers Facing Termination," SpaceDaily 9 March article: "According to Nature, NASA officials told seven mission managers (Voyager, Ulysses, Polar, Wind, Geotail, FAST ... and TRACE ...) that there is now no money to keep their projects operating after the current fiscal year ends in October."

  Barringer Crater news

• "Photo in the News: Meteor Crater Mystery Solved," National Geographic 10 March news item
• "Meteor Crater formation revisited," 10 March BBC article
• "Making Meteor Crater," Astronomy.com 9 March article: "New calculations propose the famed crater in Arizona resulted from the impact of a swarm of fragments, not a single object."
• "Mystery of Arizona's Meteor Crater Solved," Space.com 9 March article: "[Meteor Crater] 570 feet deep and 4,100 feet (1.25 kilometers) across — was blown into existence 50,000 years ago by an asteroid roughly 130 feet (40 meters) wide."
• "Scientists Solve Mystery of Meteor Crater's Missing Melted Rocks," University of Arizona 9 March news release: "The intact half of the Meteor Crater meteorite exploded with at least 2.5 megatons of energy on impact."

  Extinction cycle hypothesis

• "Mass extinction comes every 62 million years, UC physicists discover," San Francisco, California Chronicle 10 March article — Note: This article briefly mentions the Nemesis stellar companion(s), Planet X, and galactic arm theories as periodic perturbers of minor objects in the outer Solar System.
• "Mystery Undersea Extinction Cycle Discovered," National Geographic 9 March article: "The pattern includes a rise and fall of marine animal diversity every 62 million years and a weaker cycle of rising and falling marine diversity, which repeats every 140 million years."

  Other news

• Herb Raab's "story about the identification of an unknown object in images of C/2004 Q2 (Machholz) passing the Pleiades, visible in images taken by several European observers — it turned out to be a satellite or rocket booster left in a geostationary transfer orbit."
• "Tech guru tapped to run NASA," Florida Today 12 March article: "Griffin is head of the space department at Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory, a respected research hotbed which has worked closely with NASA on — among others — a past mission to land on an asteroid, a probe on the way to Mercury and planned flight to Pluto." Also see sidebar, "Scientists thrilled boss picked for job."
• David Morrison's NEO News 10 March edition, "Impact Hazard Summary for UN," at SpaceRef.com
• "Prometheus looks to nuke future," BBC 8 March article: "[NASA Prometheus project manager] John Casani says: 'My own favourite [test] mission would be a kind of nuclear tug boat to an asteroid.' "
• "Dawn Will Show How Different Two Asteroids Can Be," Universe Today 7 March article: "[In] a little more than a year, this spacecraft will blast off from Florida, bound for two separate asteroids: Vesta and Ceres."
• "Planet Puzzle: Theorists Wrestle with How They're Built," Space.com 7 March article: "[With] better meteorite dating, scientists may be able to catalog some of the violent processes that did affect the growth of the terrestrial planets."

Comet news:  MPEC 2005-E41 of March 9th announced the recovery of comet 105P/Singer Brewster on the 4th, with follow-up on 7th and 8th. It will be at perihelion on September 11th at 2.041 AU. For more about this object, see Cometography's 105P/Singer Brewster page.
      One of those to catch that comet first was Andrew Tubbiolo at the Spacewatch 0.9m telescope in Arizona, who the day before, on the morning of the 3rd UT, had found what would be named comet C/2005 E1 (Tubbiolo). Its discovery was announced in MPEC 2005-E35 of March 7th. The preliminary orbit calculation has it at perihelion on 15 November of 2006 at 1.669 AU, a bit beyond the orbit of Mars.

Radar news:  Arecibo and Goldstone have got PHA 1999 RR28 scheduled for observation by radar during 25 March to 2 April, noting that it "will approach within 0.057 AU (22 lunar distances) on March 29th. Its physical properties are unknown but its absolute magnitude of 18.3 suggests a diameter within a factor of two of 0.7 km." Both have this object flagged for more photometric observation ("We have no information about the rotation period of this object"), and Goldstone is also asking for astrometry.

Risk monitoring:  JPL has posted the small object 2005 EE169, which was announced today in MPEC 2005-E72 as discovered Thursday morning UT and confirmed yesterday morning and this morning by the Mt. Lemmon Survey, part of the Catalina Sky Survey (CSS).
      Today's Daily Orbit Update MPEC reports the observation of 2005 EA94 and 2005 EK70 last night, and of 2005 EK94 and 2005 EO70 early today, all by Great Shefford Observatory in England. Today JPL removed its impact solutions for all four objects, and NEODyS removed the three of these that it had listed (only JPL had posted 2005 EA94).

12 March 2005 - Saturday

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Risk monitoring:  Today's Daily Orbit Update (DOU) MPEC reports observation of 2004 EA94 from LINEAR in New Mexico yesterday morning, a few hours after this object was announced in MPEC 2005-E56 as discovered by LINEAR early on Tuesday, the 8th, which was confirmed by LINEAR early on the 10th and by Great Shefford Observatory in England that night. Today JPL posted this object with a single low-rated impact solution, and estimates its diameter at roughly 840 meters/yards.
      The DOU also reports observation of 2005 EJ94 from its discoverer, the Mt. Lemmon Survey (MLS) in Arizona, which is part of the Catalina Sky Survey (CSS). This set comes from about 2.35 hours after the discovery run, and was all it took for JPL to remove all 15 of its impact solutions for this almost kilometer-size object.
      Today NEODyS posted 2005 EG94 and 2005 EK94 as impact risks. It also revised its 2005 EU2 risk assessment from yesterday, slightly raising is low overall risk ratings.

11 March 2005 - Friday

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Risk monitoring:  It has been a busy day for those involved in risk monitoring. First NEODyS posted 2005 EK70 and 2005 EL70, both of which were posted yesterday by JPL with impact solutions, and JPL posted 2005 EO70. The discoveries of these three were announced yesterday and 2005 EO70 was the only one with observations published in today's Daily Orbit Update (DOU) MPEC, coming from LINEAR yesterday morning. More object discoveries were announced today and, as the day progressed in Pasadena, JPL posted three of them in turn with impact solutions: 2005 EG4, 2005 EJ4, and 2005 EK4. And, after midnight in Pisa, NEODyS posted 2005 EO70.

      The discoveries, as indicated in the chart, tally as one by the Catalina Sky Survey (CSS) and two by its Mt. Lemmon Survey, both in Arizona, two by LINEAR in New Mexico, and one with the Spacewatch 0.9m telescope in Arizona. 2005 EJ94 and 2005 EK94 were discovered Wednesday morning and the others the morning before. Their diameters, roughly estimated from brightness, start at 50 meters/yards for 2005 EL70 while the others range from 310 to 1,313 meters.
      The discovery of the smallest was confirmed only by the discoverer and Grasslands Observatory in Arizona, which also participated in confirming all the others except 2005 EG94. That one was confirmed by its discoverer and by the Mt. Lemmon Survey, which was also in on confirming 2005 EK94. Desert Moon Observatory in New Mexico helped confirm three of these objects, Sabino Canyon Observatory in Arizona and Bulach Observatory in Switzerland each got one, and Jim Bedient in Hawaii and Robert Hutsebaut in Belgium independently helped confirm 2005 EO70 using Rent-A-Scope at New Mexico Skies.
      Except for having so many new objects that need close tracking, this all looks pretty routine, with mostly low ratings for impact solutions in far-off years. The largest of these, 2005 EK94, is a bit interesting for its width, estimated to be on the order of eight-tenths of a mile, and for having some highly preliminary impact solutions in August four years from now and in the following years. Small objects are usually interesting, being Earth's closest neighbors, and JPL is showing that 2005 EL70 passed us at 14.4 lunar distances on March 3rd.
      Today's DOU carried observations of 2005 EU2 early yesterday from Jornada Observatory in New Mexico. The updated NEODyS risk ratings were mixed in direction for this small object, but JPL slightly reduced its risk assessment in its first update and a subsequent revision (which incorporated one previously rejected astrometric position).

10 March 2005 - Thursday

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Risk monitoring:  Today's Daily Orbit Update MPEC reports observation of 2005 EM30 from Tuesday night from Bassano Bresciano Observatory in Italy and last night with the Spacewatch 0.9m telescope in Arizona. Today JPL and NEODyS removed all impact solutions for this object, which was posted only yesterday with the unusual situation of having a preliminary impact solution less than seven months away.

9 March 2005 - Wednesday

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Risk monitoring:  NEODyS and JPL posted 2005 EM30 today with an impact solution for the 23rd of September of this year. Such a close solution is unusual, but that it is also highly preliminary can be discerned from 1) the very short observation arc of 4.087 days, 2) the nature of the risk ratings, and 3) NEODyS is also showing a flyby of 43 lunar distances on September 21st. Readers new to impact risk monitoring should know that impact solutions are not predictions but rather possibilities which haven't yet been eliminated, and most are soon eliminated with further observation (see "Understanding Risk Pages" by JPL's Jon Giorgini). Palermo Scale hazard ratings are pushed up by the proximity of an impact solution, and also by the size of the object, and this one is estimated by JPL at 0.786 km. (0.488 mile) wide, yet the risk monitors' PS ratings for the September solution are not high enough to trigger a Torino Scale hazard rating above zero ("no likely consequences"). So, it's a very curious bit of news, but not something about which to get overly excited.
      NEODyS, with a 2080 time horizon, has just the one 2005 impact solution, while JPL is also showing solutions in September of 2012 and 2079, and two more by 2100.
      2005 EM30 was discovered on the morning of March 4th by LINEAR in New Mexico. It was confirmed the next morning by Sandlot Observatory in Kansas, and on the morning of the 7th by Table Mountain Observatory in southern California, Sandlot Observatory, and Sabino Canyon Observatory in Arizona, as reported in MPEC 2005-E32 Monday. Further observation was reported in yesterday's Daily Orbit Update (DOU) MPEC, from LINEAR on the morning of the 7th, and, in today's DOU, from the Spacewatch 0.9m telescope in Arizona yesterday morning.
      Editor's note: All impact solutions for this object were removed the next day when more observations became available. See above.
      There is no other risk monitoring news to report from Monday. Yesterday, Tuesday, the DOU reported observation of 2005 EU2 from Begues Observatory in Spain late Monday, and today's DOU has positions reported from yesterday morning from Junk Bond Observatory in Arizona and Desert Moon Observatory in New Mexico, and from last night at Sormano Observatory in Italy. JPL and NEODyS updated their risk assessments yesterday and today with an all-up cut in their counts of impact solutions (from 534 to 145 at JPL), but a slight increase in their overall risk ratings. All of the preliminary solutions for this small object that were less than 45 years away have been removed.
      Today's DOU also reports observation of 2005 CC37 by UKAPP in Northern Ireland operating the Faulkes Telescope North in Hawaii yesterday, and of 2005 EU2 from Jornada Observatory in New Mexico early yesterday and then from someone reporting with Faulkes North multi-user program code "3." Today NEODyS and JPL removed their few impact solutions for both objects.
      Yesterday JPL updated its risk assessment for 2004 MN4, using observations reported in DOUs from 24 February through 6 March.