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

Today's issue status: done, updated

• News briefs – meteor news & namings
• Risk monitoring

Cover: This is an ESA/Deimos Space artist's impression of the Hidalgo impactor striking an asteroid while the Sancho spacecraft watches, part of the Don Quixote concept mission, which is one of six discussed in a news release today, “ESA considers the next step in assessing the risk from Near-Earth Objects.” See also “Bits & pieces” yesterday.

Meteor news:  There are reports today at New Scientist and National Geographic about an article by Philipp Heck et al. in tomorrow's issue of Nature about a colossal collision in the asteroid Main Belt some 500 million years ago that is believed to be related to the Flora asteroid family and also to L chondrite meteorites. The news is that analysis of fossil meteorites found in 480-million-year-old Swedish sediments show that pieces from this collision fell to Earth in a span of a hundred-thousand years rather than the many millions expected. See also last year's news about a time when meteors “rained.”

The Australian reports tomorrow about trends in Web news readership and notes this:

The most popular story last month on The Australian's website was . . . about a "house-sized meteor", seen by a truckie near Bulli on the NSW south coast which was said to have exploded into a cliff. As it turned out, the meteor was probably the size of a cricket ball and had fizzled out long before hitting the ground, but there's no denying that science stories have star status on the net.

See the New South Wales event news thread.

Marco Langbroek tells that a message from Pekka Savoilanen to the MeteorObs mailing list points to photos of a dust trail related to the Finnish meteor shower reported yesterday.

Namings:  The MPC Discovery Circumstances page was updated today with 82 new asteroid namings, from 3865 Lindbloom (1988 AY4) to 82232 Heuberger (2001 JU), which is now the highest-numbered object to have a name. The lowest numbered still without a name remains 3360 1981 VA, just one of the more than 86% of numbered asteroids that don't have names.

Spacewatch at Steward Observatory has namings that include 15462 Stumegan (1999 AV1), for the first FMO Project online volunteer to discover an asteroid (see news), and 15371 Steward (1996 RZ18). And one can detect a theme in namings for asteroids discovered by the van Houtens and Tom Gehrels: 11249 Etna (1971 FD), 13897 Vesuvius (4216 T-2), 19034 Santorini (2554 P-L), and more.

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About naming news yesterday and the count of asteroids named for broadcast personalities, there were at least two more, including one named for Arizona cable broadcast businessman, amateur astronomer, and science philanthropist Jack Clifford, who got his start as a sportscaster (see news thread, “Bits & pieces”). And Herbert Raab points out that 20522 Yogeshwar “was named after the editor and presenter of a popular German public science TV program, named ‘Quarks & Co.’ You can find more details here.”

And there is a new one today, 71000 Hughdowns (1999 XD37), named by Charles W. Juels for TV announcer, host, and essayist Hugh Downs, who is also a long-time officer of what is now the National Space Society (NSS).

The most recent previous namings were June 14th.

Risk monitoring 14 July

The only Wednesday news in risk monitoring is that the Minor Planet Center Last Observation page is showing that Reedy Creek Observatory in southeastern Queensland, Australia picked up 2004 MP7 yesterday.