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

Today's issue status: done

• News briefs – comet news, crater news
  + bits & pieces
• Risk monitoring

Cover: Unusual NEO 2004 UL was announced yesterday in MPEC 2004-U21, with the discovery confirmation closed out that morning with observations from Robert Hutsebaut in Belgium. He caught it with a Rent-A-Scope telescope in New Mexico at around 0730 UT, which was 9:30am his time and 1:30am at the telescope. His composite image at left stacks ten 60-second exposures on object motion of 3.43"/min. toward 249.5°. 2004 UL travels a somewhat inclined (i=22.3°) and very eccentric (e=0.918) path that crosses the orbits of all the inner planets and comes closer to the Sun than Mercury (q=0.1014 vs. 0.3075 AU). From its brightness, 2004 UL is roughly estimated to be about half a kilometer (1,525 ft.) wide.

Comet news:  Two new comets were announced today: C/2004 T3 in MPEC 2004-U24 and C/2004 U1 (LINEAR) in MPEC 2004-U25. The as-yet unnamed C/2004 T3 was discovered by the Siding Spring Survey (SSS) in Australia, with the MPEC showing observations from 12, 13, and 15 October, and confirmation from Gianluca Masi's team with the Southern TIE robotic telescope in Chile on 13, 15, and 17 October and early today. First calculation has perihelion November 11th at 9.559 AU, as far out as Saturn.

The only C/2004 U1 (LINEAR) observations from LINEAR in New Mexico are from the morning of October 19th. Positions are reported from the morning of the 16th from LONEOS in Arizona, and confirmation came yesterday morning from Drebach Observatory in Germany and Sabino Canyon Observatory in Arizona, and this morning from Great Shefford Observatory in England. Perihelion is preliminarily calculated for December 4th at 2.680 AU, out past the orbit of Mars on a retrograde i=130.3° path.

Crater news:  The Austrian Science Fund (FWF) has a news release from October 18th about drillings made from a platform floating in Ghana's remote Lake Bosumtwi crater, and says that the impact melt rock layer was found to be “not as thick as expected.” Also see other recent news.

Bits & pieces:  The Christian Science Monitor has an article from its edition today telling about the Navy Prototype Optical Interferometer (NPOI) on Anderson Mesa outside Flagstaff, Arizona. The six telescopes on a Y-shaped array have “the resolving power of a mirror 437 meters across,” and present a more difficult image-combining challenge than with infrared and radio interferometers. Lessons learned will be applied to the more powerful future Magdalena Ridge Observatory (MRO) in New Mexico.

Space.com has an article today about NASA calculations of the risk of letting the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) re-enter out of control, concluding that two tons or more of it would hit in a “debris footprint stretching over 755 miles (1,220 kilometers) in length.” Aviation Week reported October 18th that “Lockheed Martin received the $330 million prime contract for [a robotic HST servicing] mission late last month,” for which MD Robotics will provide the robot and a grappling arm. See also a Bloomberg item from October 5th and an HST update from Physics Today's October issue.

The Denver Post has an article from yesterday reporting that, despite “four major disappointments” including the recent Genesis recovery failure, “NASA is unlikely to deny [Lockheed Martin] future contracts . . . because there are few U.S. companies with the expertise to do the work.”

Risk monitoring 21 Oct.

The Thursday Daily Orbit Update MPEC has observation of 2004 UE from yesterday morning from LINEAR in New Mexico, and today JPL again lowered its risk assessment for this object, which it estimates to be on the order of 215 meters/yards wide.