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Contents  on 16 August '07

• Minor-Object News -- two items
• Minor-Object Science -- three papers
• IAU Minor Planet Center
  • NEOCP Activity -- one listing: 1 new
  • New MPECs -- one MPEC
  • Observers -- thirteen observing facilities
• Impact Risk Monitoring -- two objects reported
• Chronology

Resources:

• Consolidated Risk Tables - CRT page
• Ephemerides for risk-rated objects
• Ephemerides for small asteroids

The latest news: framed access (best), RSS news feed (flags updates), or redirection - Note: A/CC has a main Web site and a backup site.

Navigation tips: Use the << and >> arrows on the menus for each regular section (Observers, Risks, etc.) to move to the previous and next day's news for that section. Use the Index menu item to access specific days this year through a calendar interface. And use the all-up news archive to access news from any time since A/CC began in early 2002. To keep track of what's new each day, watch the Chronology section.

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Minor-Object News  on 16 August '07

• "Star mapping has universal appeal," Toronto Star 16 Aug. - Quote: "[Dustin] Lang and his supervisor Sam Roweis and others have created an 'astrometry engine' that ... will take any image and return a matching identification using the astrometry WCS, or world co-ordinate system... So far, Lang and his team have matched up or 'solved' 300,000 images." - Note: Visit astrometry.net for more info. This seems like it could be a way, if at least four stars appear sharply enough in the frame, to turn amateur photos and videos of meteor showers and fireballs into useful scientific data. {permalink}
• "NASA: Carbon Composite Materials Might Not Be So Bad for Spacecraft," Wired 16 Aug. - Quote: "Set to ship to the launch site in just less then a year, the 4th Hubble servicing mission team is in full swing, working long hours and pouring over details." {permalink}

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Minor-Object Science  on 16 August '07

• "Evaluating the Signatures of the Mean Motion Resonances in the Solar System" by Gallardo, Tabare, abstract & PDF at arXiv.org 16 Aug. - Quote: "The characteristics of the resonant disturbing function for an asteroid perturbed by a planet in circular orbit are discussed. The location of the libration centers and their dependence with the orbital elements of the resonant orbit are analyzed. A proposed numerical method (Gallardo 2006a) for computing the strengths of the resonances is revised and applied to the region of the main belt of asteroids showing the relevance of several mean motion resonances (MMR) with several planets." {permalink}
• "An evolved disk surrounding the massive main sequence star MWC 297?" by Manoj, P. with Paul T. P. Ho, Nagayoshi Ohashi & 5 others, abstract & PDF at arXiv.org 16 Aug. - Quote: "We present the results of the interferometric observations of the circumstellar disk surrounding MWC 297... At a distance of 250 pc, MWC 297 is one of the closest, young massive stars... Our result demonstrates that circumstellar disks can survive around massive stars well into their main sequence phase even after they have become optically visible... The mass of this disk and the evolutionary trends observed are similar to those found for intermediate mass Herbig Ae stars and low mass T Tauri stars." {permalink}
• "VLBA determination of the distance to nearby star-forming regions I. The distance to T Tauri with 0.4% accuracy" by Loinard, Laurent with Rosa M. Torres, Amy J. Mioduszewski & 5 others, abstract & PDF at arXiv.org 16 Aug. - Quote: "In this article, we present the results of a series of twelve 3.6-cm radio continuum observations of T Tau Sb, one of the companions of the famous young stellar object T Tauri. The data were collected roughly every two months between September 2003 and July 2005 with the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA). [The] absolute position of T Tau Sb could be measured with a precision typically better than about 100 micro-arcseconds at each of the twelve observed epochs. The trajectory of T Tau Sb on the plane of the sky could [therefore be] modeled as the superposition of the trigonometric parallax of the source and an accelerated proper motion. The best fit yields a distance to T Tau Sb of 147.6 +/- 0.6 pc." {permalink}

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NEOCP Activity  on 16 August '07

The MPC's NEO Confirmation Page has 1 listing: 1 new

When last checked at 2354 UTC today, the Minor Planet Center's NEO discovery Confirmation Page (NEOCP) had one new listing. This was a "one nighter." So far Major News has counted a total of three objects listed on the NEOCP at some point today.

To learn how observers use the NEOCP, see Suno Observatory's Practical guide on how to observe NEOCP object.

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New MPECs  on 16 August '07

Minor Planet Electronic Circulars

As of last check at 2354 UTC, there has been one MPEC issued today from the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

<< DOU on 16 Aug. '07 >>  MPEC 2007-Q01 - "06:08 UT" - Daily Orbit Update

• Observations of risk-listed objects
• K07P27V   2007 PV27 (arc=1 day, H=20.5 ~269m) from the Siding Spring Survey (SSS) (Aug. 15.58-59p5)
• Observations of small asteroids (H>22.0)
• K07P25S   2007 PS25 (arc=3 days, H=25.2 ~31m) from Remanzacco Obs. (Aug. 15.95-96p3)
• K07P09Q   2007 PQ9 (arc=5 days, H=22.2 ~123m) from Parma Obs. (Aug. 16.02-04p4)
• K07P08D   2007 PD8 (arc=5 days, H=22.5 ~107m) from Mt. John Obs. (Aug. 15.45-46p3)
• Observations of other objects
• K07P11U   2007 PU11 (Q=4.452 AU, arc=50 days, H=16.3 ~1.86 km) from Frasso Sabino Obs. (Aug. 14.98p3)
• K07P10R   2007 PR10 (q=0.134 AU, arc=3 days, H=20.7 ~245m) from SSS (Aug. 14.62p2 & 15.60-61p5) and Mt. John Obs. (Aug. 15.43-44p5)
• K07P09P   2007 PP9 (arc=5 days, H=21.1 ~204m) from Frasso Sabino Obs. (Aug. 14.97p2), LINEAR (Aug. 15.27-32p5), and Parma Obs. (Aug. 15.99-01p6)
• K07P08E   2007 PE8 (arc=5 days, H=19.5 ~426m) from Frasso Sabino Obs. (Aug. 14.89-90p4), Linceo Obs. (Aug. 14.92-95p3), Santa Mama Obs. (Aug. 14.92-94p8), LINEAR (Aug. 15.15-26p15), and Verona Obs. (Aug. 15.86-87p5)
• K07P06P   2007 PP6 (q=0.364 AU, arc=6 days, H=17.2 ~1.23 km) from SSS (Aug. 15.56p4)
• K07P00Q   2007 PQ (arc=11 days, H=20.5 ~269m) from SSS (Aug. 15.37p1)
• K07O00X   2007 OX (arc=28 days, H=21.1 ~204m) from Mt. John Obs. (Aug. 15.48-49p4)
• K07N05C   2007 NC5 (q=0.277 AU, Q=4.618 AU, arc=42 days, H=18.0 ~851m) from Frasso Sabino Obs. (Aug. 14.91-92p2)
• K07N00Q   2007 NQ (arc=35 days, H=19.4 ~446m) from Verona Obs. (Aug. 14.83-85p4)
• K07L15A   2007 LA15 (arc=63 days, H=19.5 ~426m) from Santa Mama Obs. (Aug. 14.85-88p8)
• K07F00A   2007 FA (arc=2 opp, H=20.2 ~309m) from the Spacewatch 0.9m telescope (Aug. 10.46-48p3)
• K07DA3T   2007 DT103 (arc=170 days, H=19.1 ~513m) from Linceo Obs. (Aug. 15.04-06p3) and Iluro Obs. (Aug. 15.07-08p3)
• K07D08K   2007 DK8 (arc=179 days, H=19.0 ~537m) from Frasso Sabino Obs. (Aug. 15.01p2)
• K07C26K   2007 CK26 (arc=2 opp, H=19.0 ~537m) from Verona Obs. (Aug. 14.87p5) and Santa Mama Obs. (Aug. 14.88-91p8)
• K06Y00D   2006 YD (Q=4.442 AU, arc=2 opp, H=17.4 ~1.12 km) from Parma Obs. (Aug. 15.93-95p3)
• K06R36O   2006 RO36 (arc=2 opp, H=18.0 ~851m) from Frasso Sabino Obs. (Aug. 14.95p2)
• K02S00P   2002 SP (q=0.361 AU, arc=2 opp, H=20.7 ~245m) from Mt. John Obs. (Aug. 15.59-60p3)
• K01F06Z   2001 FZ6 (arc=4 opp, H=18.4 ~708m) from Spacewatch 0.9m (Aug. 10.46-49p3)
• K00Q07T   2000 QT7 (arc=2 opp, H=20.0 ~339m) from LINEAR (Aug. 15.33-38p5)
• J99J03U   1999 JU3 (arc=4 opp, H=19.2 ~490m) from Frasso Sabino Obs. (Aug. 14.93-94p2)
• E5656   145656 4788 P-L from Dresden Obs. (Aug. 14.87-89p4)
• 86324   86324 1999 WA2 from Santa Mama Obs. (Aug. 14.80-83p8) and Drebach Obs. (Aug. 14.85p10)
• 85275   85275 1994 LY from Drebach Obs. (Aug. 14.83-84p7) and Dresden Obs. (Aug. 14.85-86p4)
• 66063   66063 1998 RO1 from LINEAR (Aug. 15.39-44p5)
• 16636   16636 1993 QP from Iluro Obs. (Aug. 15.03-04p2)

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Observers  on 16 August '07

Thirteen observing facilities appear in today's MPECs.

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Impact Risk Monitoring  on 16 August '07

Legend: VI# = VI count, Prob Cum = cumulative probability, PS Cum/Max = cumulative/maximum Palermo Scale, TS = Torino Scale

An impact solution, also known as a "virtual impactor" (VI), is not a prediction but rather a possibility derived from an orbit calculation that cannot be eliminated yet based on the existing data. Elimination can come quickly with just a little further observation or may take weeks or months, sometimes years. Once superceded or eliminated, a former impact solution has zero relevance to an object's risk. See Jon Giorgini's "Understanding Risk Pages" for more about this.

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Chronology  on 16 August '07

Times are UTC for when the items were noted or added by Major News.