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This Google map, courtesy of the SETI Institute's Aurigid Meteor Shower Observing Campaign page, shows the northeast-to-southwest path planned for two aircraft with observing teams to study the unusual outburst predicted for early on Sept. 1st. See more below.

Contents  on 7 August '07

• Minor-Object News -- eleven items
• Minor-Object Science -- one paper
• IAU Minor Planet Center
  • NEOCP Activity -- one listing: 1 updated
  • New MPECs -- two MPECs
  • Observers -- thirteen observing facilities
• Impact Risk Monitoring -- one object reported
• Chronology

Resources:

• Consolidated Risk Tables - CRT page
• Ephemerides for risk-rated objects
• Ephemerides for small asteroids

The latest news: framed access (best), RSS news feed (flags updates), or redirection - Note: A/CC has a main Web site and a backup site.

Navigation tips: Use the << and >> arrows on the menus for each regular section (Observers, Risks, etc.) to move to the previous and next day's news for that section. Use the Index menu item to access specific days this year through a calendar interface. And use the all-up news archive to access news from any time since A/CC began in early 2002. To keep track of what's new each day, watch the Chronology section.

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Minor-Object News  on 7 August '07

• "Mars Meteorites Create Water Mystery," Space.com 7 Aug. - Quote: "The identification and study of five meteorites on the surface of Mars by NASA's twin rovers Spirit and Opportunity has presented a fresh mystery... Although the meteorites are alien to Mars, they interact with the Martian environment, so evidence of Mars' supposed water-rich past should be written on their surfaces [and] the lack of oxidization is puzzling." {permalink}
• "New Mexico Tech Signs MRO Telescopes Contract With Amos," New Mexico Tech 2 Aug. - Quote: "Administrators at New Mexico Tech recently signed a contract with Advanced Mechanical and Optical Systems (AMOS) to have the Belgian company design and build [three of ten planned 1.4-meter] telescopes for the research university's Magdalena Ridge Observatory (MRO) Interferometer project... [The] first telescope [is] scheduled to be delivered to MRO facilities during the Summer of 2009." {permalink}
• 2007 Aurigids: A rare outburst of the Aurigid meteor shower is predicted for early on September 1st over western North America when the Earth crosses the First Century B.C. path of comet C/1911 N1 (Kiess). The July 29th Aurigids 2007 page at NASA Ames gives several reasons why this is an important observational opportunity, including being the "only known case" in our coming lifetimes of crossing a long-period comet dust trail, and this: "Long-period comets, such as were Hale-Bopp, Hyakutake, and McNaught, tend to sneak up on us. They are a potential impact danger. What can the dust trail tell us about their physical nature?" It goes on to explain that "The Aurigids were seen three times before, in 1935, 1986, and 1994... This trail is not crossed again in the next 70 years... [Esko Lyytinen and Peter Jenniskens] concluded that the Earth encountered meteoroids that originated from the pristine crust of a long-period comet. Only long-period comets still have such 'pristine crusts' created by 4.5 billion years worth of cosmic ray exposure when the comets reside in the Oort cloud. The meteor shower provided the only direct evidence for the existence of these crusts. In this context, it is interesting that Bob Lunsford, eye witness of the 1994 Aurigid outburst, described the outburst Aurigids as greenish or bluish, typical of meteors that have unusually intense metal atom lines compared to air plasma emissions."
        For more details, see the SETI Institute's August 4th Aurigid Meteor Shower Observing Campaign page, ESA's July 5th 2007 Aurigid Campaign page, and Jeremie Vaubaillon's IMCCE 2007 Alpha-Aurigids page. These pages each have links to one or more of several publicly available related science papers.
        The SETI page explains that people can contribute their own data from counting visually and/or using digital or video cameras, and also tells how the U.S. Aurigid campaign will use two privately-owned Gulfstream jets to observe the outburst over the western U.S. and out over the Pacific (see path above). The European campaign will be based in Hawaii.
        For those of you in the viewing area who would like to contribute to meteor science (amateurs and neophytes welcomed), see Chris Crawford's Aurigid Meteor Observation Project. He provides instructions for beginners and a Java applet for your laptop, with the goal to "combine the observations of thousands of people in order to build a three-dimensional map of a meteor stream." Even if you won't be participating, you may find his How to observe meteors page to be, well, eye opening. {permalink}
• "Life-Forms "Resurrected" After Millennia in Ice," National Geographic 7 Aug. - Quote: "'Each solar system is an island of life,' [Paul Falkowski] said. Microbes on comets would be exposed to lethal doses of cosmic radiation for millions of years during their journey... 'Under those conditions you would be sterilizing comets.'" {permalink}
  • "Ancient microbes 'revived' in lab," BBC News 7 Aug. - Quote: "Kay Bidle ... and colleagues extracted bacteria from ice found between three and five metres beneath the surface of a glacier in the Beacon and Mullins valleys of Antarctica." {permalink}
  • "Locked in Glaciers, Ancient Microbes May Return to Life," Rutgers Univ. 6 Aug. - Quote: "[Researchers] melted five samples of ice ranging in age from 100,000 to 8 million years old to find the microorganisms trapped inside... [They found that] 'There is still DNA left after 1.1 million years... But 1.1 million years is the 'half-life' -- that is, every 1.1 million years, the DNA gets chopped in half... It's the cosmic radiation that's blasting the DNA into pieces over geologic time, and most of the organisms can't repair that damage.' [Thus] the researchers also concluded that life on Earth, however it arose, did not ride in on a comet or other debris from outside the solar system. '[The] preservation of microbes and their genes in icy comets may have allowed transfer of genetic material among planets... However, given the extremely high cosmic radiation flux in space, our results suggest it is highly unlikely that life on Earth could have been seeded by genetic material external to this solar system.'" {permalink}
  • "There may be life out there, but it's nothing to do with us," The Scotsman 7 Aug. - Quote: "Humans cannot possibly be related to any intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, a new scientific study has found... The scientists found microbes younger than 1.1 million years were able to come back to life, but this period is too short to make the journey from one solar system to another." {permalink}
  • "Scientists debunk comet ice life theory," AAP at The Age 7 Aug. - Quote: "Other scientists in New Jersey said that they were intrigued by the Rutgers study, but suggested there might be ways some organic material could survive long-term rides on a comet." {permalink}
• "Pair excel at identifying meteorites," Morning Sun 7 Aug. - Quote: "Alma College Professors Melissa Strait and Murray Borrello have become the state's unofficial examiners of all the suspected meteorites found in the state... Although rare, meteorites have been found in the mid-Michigan area. Strait examined the baseball sized meteor that came flaming through a Coleman barn back in the 1990s." - Note: Meteors are no longer "flaming" by the time they reach barn-roof altitude. {permalink}
• "Prepare for the Perseids," Sky & Telescope 6 Aug. - Quote: "It doesn't really matter where in the sky you look; activity covers the entire sky.... Though most will be Perseids, you'll probably see plenty of Aquarids moving in the opposite direction. And this time of year is also a good one for sporadic meteors." {permalink}
  • "Natural fireworks, courtesy of the Perseid meteor shower," ESA 7 Aug. - Quote: "The display will be at its maximum before sunrise on 13 August, when 80 to 100 meteors should be visible every hour, weather permitting... Even if the sky may not be totally clear, you can expect to see tens of meteors in the sky from all over Europe... The Meteor Research Group at ESA is performing coordinated observations at several locations in Austria and Germany." {permalink}

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Minor-Object Science  on 7 August '07

• "The response of self-graviting protostellar discs to slow reduction in cooling timescale: the fragmentation boundary revisited" by Clarke, C. with E. Harper-Clark & G. Lodato, abstract & PDF at arXiv.org 7 Aug. - Quote: "We ... conclude that a disc's ability to remain in a self-regulated, self-gravitating state (without fragmentation) is partly dependent on its thermal history, as well as its current cooling rate. Nevertheless [our results] do not undermine the notion of a fundamental upper limit to the heating rate that can be delivered by gravitational instabilities before the disc is subject to fragmentation. An important implication of this work, therefore, is that self-gravitating discs can enter into the regime of fragmentation via secular evolution and it is not necessary to invoke rapid (impulsive) events to trigger fragmentation." {permalink}

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NEOCP Activity  on 7 August '07

The MPC's NEO Confirmation Page has 1 listing: 1 updated

When last checked at 2354 UTC today, the Minor Planet Center's NEO discovery Confirmation Page (NEOCP) had one updated listing. This was a "one nighter."

To learn how observers use the NEOCP, see Suno Observatory's Practical guide on how to observe NEOCP object.

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New MPECs  on 7 August '07

Minor Planet Electronic Circulars

As of last check at 2355 UTC, there have been two MPECs issued today from the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

• MPEC 2007-P18 time-stamped "06:06 UT" - Daily Orbit Update - see below
• MPEC 2007-P19 time-stamped "13:38 UT" - 2002 UN

MPEC 2007-P19 - "13:38 UT" - 2002 UN

• K02U00N   2002 UN (Q=4.838 AU, H=17.2 ~1.23 km) from Mt. John Obs. (July 13.61-64p5 & Aug. 7.52-54p3)

<< DOU on 7 Aug. '07 >>  MPEC 2007-P18 - "06:06 UT" - Daily Orbit Update

• Observations of risk-listed objects
• K04X44N   2004 XN44 (arc=35 days, H=18.2 ~776m) from David Tholen's team on Mauna Kea (2005 Jan. 15.22-23p8 at R=22.9 & 2005 Jan. 17.22-24p15 at R=22.8)
• Observations of small asteroids (H>22.0)
• K07O09R   2007 OR9 (arc=14 days, H=22.3 ~117m) from Bergisch Gladbach Obs. (Aug. 5.92-95p3)
• Observations of other objects
• K07P00Q   2007 PQ (arc=2 days, H=20.5 ~269m) from the Siding Spring Survey (SSS) (Aug. 6.38p1)
• K07O00V   2007 OV (arc=21 days, H=19.2 ~490m) from Mt. John Obs. (Aug. 6.60p3)
• K07N05C   2007 NC5 (q=0.278 AU, Q=4.614 AU, arc=33 days, H=17.9 ~891m) from Naef Obs. (Aug. 5.89-93p2)
• K07N04S   2007 NS4 (arc=22 days, H=19.1 ~513m) from SSS (Aug. 3.50p1 & 6.60-61p2)
• K07M24C   2007 MC24 (arc=40 days, H=19.5 ~426m) from SSS (Aug. 3.51-52p2)
• K07L32R   2007 LR32 (arc=73 days, H=17.2 ~1.23 km) from Atlante Obs. (Aug. 6.06-08p3)
• K07F01E   2007 FE1 (arc=141 days, H=18.8 ~589m) from SSS (Aug. 3.50p2)
• K07DA3T   2007 DT103 (arc=161 days, H=19.0 ~537m) from Modra Obs. (Aug. 1.93-94p4, 4.05-06p4, 5.03p5 & 5.95-96p4)
• K02G01H   2002 GH1 (Q=4.142 AU, arc=4 opp, H=15.6 ~2.57 km, q=1.245 AU) from Irmtraut Obs. (Aug. 5.93p1)
• 87309   87309 2000 QP from Gualba Obs. (Aug. 5.02p3)
• 85275   85275 1994 LY from New Millennium Obs. (Aug. 4.86p2 & 4.91-94p4) and Ondrejov Obs. (Aug. 5.86-95p5)
• 24443   24443 2000 OG from Gualba Obs. (Aug. 5.89p2)
• 21277   21277 1996 TO5 from Gualba Obs. (Aug. 4.99-00p3)
• 16636   16636 1993 QP from LINEAR (Aug. 6.27-32p5)
• 07350   7350 1993 VA from Lulin Minor Bodies Tracking (LIMIT) (Aug. 5.73-75p3)
• 05143   5143 Heracles (1991 VL) from LINEAR (Aug. 6.32-36p3)

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Observers  on 7 August '07

Thirteen observing facilities appear in today's MPECs.

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Impact Risk Monitoring  on 7 August '07

Legend: VI# = VI count, Prob Cum = cumulative probability, PS Cum/Max = cumulative/maximum Palermo Scale, TS = Torino Scale

An impact solution, also known as a "virtual impactor" (VI), is not a prediction but rather a possibility derived from an orbit calculation that cannot be eliminated yet based on the existing data. Elimination can come quickly with just a little further observation or may take weeks or months, sometimes years. Once superceded or eliminated, a former impact solution has zero relevance to an object's risk. See Jon Giorgini's "Understanding Risk Pages" for more about this.

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Chronology  on 7 August '07

Times are UTC for when the items were noted or added by Major News.