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News briefs
FMOP discovery: Spacewatch FMO Project temporary designation SW40GS has been posted to the Minor Planet Center NEO Confirmation Page (NEOCP). It was discovered today by online volunteer Mariusz
Kuczewski, and the FMOP notes that the object “is moving at nearly 6 deg/day and only two positions were found.” Update: Designated 2004 ST26 — see the September 24th cover image.
Big flyby: Going by absolute magnitude (brightness) in JPL's near-Earth asteroid list, 4179 Toutatis is among the 84 largest NEAs (H=15.30). Its September 29th flyby at four lunar distances offers not just an opportunity for backyard asteroid observing but also for some creative astrophotography. One possibility is pairings by adjacent observatories to use the parallax effect in their simultaneous observations to try creating 3D stereo pairs and animations that will pop Toutatis right off its starry background. Sky & Telescope has an article detailing the flyby with charts.
Rosetta news: The Rosetta mission yesterday or today posted status reports dated 6, 13, and 22 September for the period from 20 August through 17 September. They reflect a transition from a quiet cruise phase back to daily
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communications with software maintenance and “the start of the second and last part of the Commissioning Phase.” And “the Lander magnetometer ROMAP was activated in parallel to the orbiter RPC magnetometer to allow parallel scientific measurements around Rosetta's closest approach to the tail of comet 21P/Giacobini-Zinner (down to 0.0036 AU).”
Bits & pieces: The journal Nature has a news item from yesterday about how impact craters can help foster life. See also news September 10th (“Bits & pieces”).
Sky & Telescope has an Astro News Brief from September 20th telling that Kodak has “acknowledged that its last production run of Technical Pan film [SO-115] was ‘several years ago,’ and that the film will remain available only until the existing inventory is depleted,” and saying that it will be missed since there is nothing else like it “as an astronomical substitute. Nor has digital imaging yet advanced to the point where it can fully replace wide-field, film-based astrophotography.”
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