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News briefs
Bits & pieces: Space.com reports today, “Genesis Reentry Observed By Ground, Airborne Instruments.” It says that “Initial reports from ground teams indicate that the reentry was not seen visually against the bright daytime sky, but was recorded by video cameras.” Also, “A sonic boom was heard at all participating ground stations [and an] infrasound record of the capsule cutting through the atmosphere was acquired.” See also A/CC news links regarding the re-entry (“Bits & pieces”) and crash (“Sample returns”).
There is more about observing from Antartica (see 15 September “Bits & pieces”). An Astronomy.com September 17th article reports that “Construction of a fully robotic, 0.8m infrared telescope has already begun at Dome C. Plans call for the Italian Robotic Antarctic Infrared Telescope (IRAIT) to begin observations in December 2005.” And a September 17th Anglo-Australian Observatory news release is headlined, “Radical Antarctic telescope ‘would outdo Hubble.’”
Noticed at SpaceToday.net is a link to a September 17th ARRL item about NASA online satellite tracking tools.
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Comet precovery by Maik Meyer
The timing was right for Maik Meyer when MPEC 2004-S17 appeared Saturday afternoon with the latest observations and a new orbit calculation for what was now comet P/2004 NL21 (LINEAR).
It came right after my little son went to bed and I was preparing for a comet observing session, so I had time without family duties. I quickly checked for earlier images of this comet and SkyMorph indicated two days in 1996 in NEAT data with an asteroidal brightness of 18 mag. I was not very hopeful but almost fell off my seat when I saw the bright 16-mag. comet with a coma and a tiny tail on my screen.
I quickly measured the two days, composed the message to the MPC, and, when I came back from my comet observing, MPEC 2004-S18 had been issued containing the observations and updated orbits for the 1996 and 2004 apparitions. I still wonder why this one slipped through NEAT's detection, because it is so obvious. Now this comet will become numbered — my second precovery which leads to a permanent numbering after 159P/LONEOS.
Maik Meyer is an amateur comet observer, astronomical archive sleuth, publisher of the Catalogue of Comet Discoveries, and discoverer of the Meyer group of comets observed close to the Sun from SOHO. See news yesterday for more about this and other precoveries.
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