Comet news:  Currently posted to the NEOCP is temporary designation ASAS1, a likely comet discovery by the All Sky Automated Survey at Las Campanas yesterday that had the Comets Mailing List abuzz. Hirohisa Sato provided a preliminary orbit calculation to the list yesterday with perihelion at q=0.29505 late on 12 October at i=57.9° and e=1.0.

Risk monitoring 9 Sept.

JPL posted 2004 RJ9 yesterday, and NEODyS posted it today, both with three (different) low-rated impact solutions. It was discovered early Tuesday by LINEAR in New Mexico, linked with LINEAR observations a day before, and confirmed Tuesday night by KLENOT in the Czech Republic, Gnosca and Eschenberg observatories in Switzerland and Guidestar Observatory in Germany, and yesterday morning by Powell and Farpoint observatories in Kansas and Table Mountain Observatory in southern California. This object, which JPL estimates to have a diameter on the order of 416 meters/yards, is not reported in the Thursday Daily Orbit Update MPEC.

Stu Megan assisted with this report.