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News briefs
Occultation news: The Conroe, Texas Courier reported April 1st that high school sophomore Beth Turner "won her third first-place award and Grand Award in a row" at "the Science Engineering Fair of Houston" with her project on "Asteroid Occultations." See Richard Nugent's news page about observing an occultation by 208 Lacrimosa early December 31st. David Dunham in January noted that, at age 15, she was "perhaps the youngest observer of an asteroidal occultation (and almost certainly the youngest to video record one)." Paul Maley's Houston Astronomical Events page tells about this successful group effort and has a picture of Beth Turner with her equipment.
Bits & pieces: Additional to Thursday "Radar news", Ondrejov Observatory has posted a 2001 US16 lightcurve and a Binary NEA 1999 DJ4 page.
A Xinhua news item (March 31st "Bits & pieces") that the name of China's first astronaut will be submitted to the IAU for naming an asteroid morphed somehow into an AFP wire story carried at various news sites,
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such as SpaceDaily April 1st, that "A Chinese observatory is seeking agreement with an international space naming body to name an unnamed star after Yang Liwei" (emphasis added). Update: Bill Yeung points out that Eric Elst already named 21064 Yangliwei !
Site news from the editor: March was a banner month for minor object news and I am pleased to tell you that site traffic exceeded 800 average daily visits (about 25,300 total), doubling January and February numbers. A/CC Major News succeeds through reader participation, and I would like to collectively thank you for info from experts, images from observers, and news tips and reports of text problems from everybody.
This is a good place for an overdue public "thank you" to Andre Knoefel and the Walter Hohmann (Essen) Observatory for sending a reprint of Walter Hohmann's 1925 book, Die Erreichbarkeit der Himmelskoerper (The Attainability of Celestial Bodies), in which he invented what is now called a "Hohmann transfer orbit" to move from one orbit to another. The reprint, in German only, can be ordered from the observatory.
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