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News briefs
Intruder alert: [parts revised and expanded]
MPEC 2004-U29 today announces the discovery of tiny 2004 UH1, which is flying through the Earth-Moon system and, according to JPL, will come to 0.7 to 0.8 lunar distances from Earth around 1740 UT (1:40pm EDT) tomorrow. From its brightness, its diameter is estimated at 8 meters/yards, using a standard but inexact formula.
2004 UH1 was found by FMO Project online volunteer Stu Megan in Arizona, who was reviewing images over the Internet from the Spacewatch 0.9m telescope, also in Arizona. Mike Read was operating the telescope and did the measuring. The discovery frame was at 0423 UT this morning (9:23pm local last night), followed by two frames with the last at 0551 UT. At 0750 UT, the Spacewatch 1.8m telescope picked up UH1 and followed it until 1008 UT.
The object was posted to the NEO Confirmation Page at apparently 1114 UT [thanks to Peter Birtwhistle for that detail]. And Robert Hutsebaut in Belgium logged on at 1150 UT to operate a telescope at New Mexico Skies, where dawn was coming, and caught enough frames for stacking to measure three positions from 1156 to 1205 UT (6:05am at the
2004 UH1 continued >>
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PDS files: A Python PDS module has been posted for those who script their own utilities and want to access NASA Planetary Data System image files. It is a component of a future viewer/converter for file formats used in minor object science, and was made available now to help private individuals who are freshly processing Mars Exploration Rover imagery from newly available PDS archives. Daniel Crotty's radiometrically-calibrated versions, for instance, usually begin with images from six different color filters, read directly from the original files using this Python module, which he helped test.
Custom programming is needed because PDS files are not supported by software readily available to the public. Last year A/CC used the first version of this module to assemble what is probably still the only animation made public of Stardust's asteroid 5535 Annefrank flyby.
Incidentally, only a part of the photo set from Stardust's January comet 81P/Wild 2 flyby has been shown to the public and scientific community, and none of it at original resolution. In response to talk about the few muddied images released at the time, JPL's Ron Baalke told the Minor Planet Mailing list (MPML) in January that “the proprietary period is 6 months for Stardust. The data will be submitted to PDS where it will be available to anybody.” More than nine months later, the photos are not yet in the Small Bodies PDS Stardust archive.
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