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

Today's issue status: done

• Small objects – report for 10-16 May
  Observation summary
• Risk monitoring

Cover: One of this past week's first newly announced small objects, 2004 JP1, is seen here in confirmation imagery from Robert Hutsebaut in Belgium operating a telescope at New Mexico Skies. This is a stack of four 20-second exposures.

Small objects
Discovery & follow-up 10-16 May

That it is difficult to follow small near-Earth asteroids is evident from today's news. Only three objects of active concern are left on the risk monitors' pages, and all three are small. And, between Minor Planet Center and JPL current listings, today there are 561 objects with absolute magnitude H>22.0 (estimated at 135 meters wide or less), and only one is numbered.

Nineteen observatories participated in this past week's work. Seven discoveries of small asteroids were announced, another three small asteroids were tracked, and tracking of four more was reported from earlier. Four of the discoveries were made with the LINEAR facility at White Sands in New Mexico run from Massachusetts. And three were made with the Spacewatch 0.9m telescope in Arizona. One of these was by veteran asteroid hunter Jim Scotti at the observatory on Kitt Peak, and two were by volunteers in the Spacewatch FMO Project — Lisa Turner in Texas and Franco Mallia in Italy, who reviewed images over the Internet

Last Sunday's small objects report ended with the note that no close Earth flybys by small objects were predicted "for the next month and a half." Well, 2004 JO12 flew past at 13.1 lunar distances (LD) three days later, but two days before discovery. And 2004 JO20 and 2004 JP1 will respectively fly past at 3.2 LD tomorrow and 3.0 LD Tuesday.

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Notes: Diameters in the following observation summary table are rough best estimates from a standard but very inexact H-to-size formula using H (absolute magnitude) from the JPL NEO Orbital Elements page, source also for Earth MOID (minimum orbital intersection). Other planetary MOIDs are from Lowell Observatory. Current Minor Planet Center H is also given, along with the original H from each object's discovery MPEC. Priorities, visibilities, and campaigns are from the European Spaceguard Central Node (SCN).

Risk monitoring 16 May

None of the three objects recently in view that have impact solutions are reported in the Sunday Daily Orbit Update MPEC. All three are small objects (estimated at 120 or 80 meters/yards wide), and two are shown by the European Spaceguard Central Node Priority List to still be visible, 2004 HM until May 22nd and 2004 HQ1 until June 3rd.

The Minor Planet Center Last Observation is showing that 2004 HM was caught this morning with the Spacewatch 1.8m telescope in Arizona.