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News briefs
Moon buzzer: Multiple sources put 2004 ST26's Earth passage at about 2330 UT September 21st, and Sormano Observatory and Pasquale Tricarico put the distance at 0.956 lunar distance. FMO Project volunteer Mariusz Kuczewski of Poland, who was reviewing images online the next morning from the Spacewatch 0.9m telescope in Arizona, found 2004 ST26 in frames from 0650 and 0728 UT. The discovery was confirmed overnight from six other observing facilities (see Peter Birtwhistle's confirmation imagery above), and was announced in MPEC 2004-S55. It is roughly estimated to be just under 20 meters/yards wide.
Excerpt of Pasquale Tricarico's animation of 2004 ST26 buzzing the Moon, seen from the asteroid, just after midnight on September 22nd. Done with ORSA, the full animation is available as a 994Kb GIF.
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2004 ST26 appears to have come slightly closer than 2004 RU109, which on only September 13th had made what was then the sixth closest flyby this year. Even more interesting, Pasquale Tricarico reports it came to 0.076 lunar distance from the Moon at 0002 UT on the 22nd — the closest this year.
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Bits & pieces: The Southwest Research Institute has a news release dated September 22nd about how its NASA Ion and Electron Spectrometer (IES) aboard the ESA Rosetta comet orbiter “successfully underwent an intensive commissioning exercise that qualified it for operation during the next decade.”
Astronomy.com has an article from September 20th about Don Machholz and his discovery of C/2004 Q2 (Machholz).
An article at the British Columbia Vancouver Sun yesterday tells about the 55th annual International Astronautical Congress (IAC) to be held there on 4-8 October. The public program includes IMAX movies and a Rosetta presentation on “Landing on a Comet.” The article notes that “Canada is the largest export nation of any spacefaring nation in terms of its space industry.”
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