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

Today's issue status: done

• News briefs – meteor news & B612 mission
• Risk monitoring

Cover: With the bright Moon in view and dawn creeping up on Albuquerque, New Mexico, an all-sky camera on the city's south side at 5:29am Thursday catches its third bright meteor in a 52-minute period (see report and movie links). The meteor creates its own directional arrow in this composite "flight" image created at A/CC from 13 contiguous frames from the Quicktime movie posted temporarily by Sandia National Lab. North is up and west is left

Meteor news:  Wire stories today from Reuters UK and the Australian Associated Press, such as "Rare space junk for sale" at the Melbourne Herald Sun today, tell about a brick-size "11 kg (22 pounds)" coarse octahedrite Group IIIF iron meteorite, one of seven known to exist, that "is expected to sell for more than Aus$100,000" in a sale that closes June 16th. It was found 25 years ago during plowing of a farm field in Binya, in northern New South Wales, and will be put on public display "next month in Brisbane."

The AAP report says "Throughout the world only six other Group IIIF meteorites are officially registered," but the Meteorite Catalogue Database lists eight total, and shows that this one was found 1 April 1981, not quite the "25 years ago" in the reports. See The Meteoritical Bulletin, No. 84, 2000 August for this meteorite's technical description.

B612 mission:  Astrobiology magazine posted today astronaut, and B612 Foundation chairman, Russell Schweickart's April 7th Senate testimony with this summary: “When will defending the planet mean simply calling on the ‘Ace Asteroid Mining and Moving Company’ to nudge asteroid gently out of the way?” See more links related to that in A/CC's April 8th coverage.

Risk monitoring 8 May

The Saturday Daily Orbit Update MPEC reports observation of 2004 HQ1 early yesterday by Tenagra II Observatory in Arizona, adding 4.66 days to what had been a 13.39-day observing arc. Today NEODyS lowered its already low risk ratings for this small object.