MPML/R.Stoss. SkyMapper is among the first of a new breed of surveying telescopes which are able to scan the nighttime skies more quickly and deeper than ever before. The SkyMapper telescope will provide a deep digital map of the southern sky which will allow astronomers to study everything from nearby objects such as asteroids in our solar system to the most distant objects in the universe called quasars. The data taken by the SkyMapper telescope will be shared with astronomers around the world via the Virtual Observatory initiative, so that every possible use can be made of this resource.

MPML/A. Milani. A new book "Theory of orbit determination" by Milani & Gronchi, 392 pages, has been published by Cambridge University Press. If purchasing this book support the BAA by accessing Amazon via the BAA Journal webpage.

MPML/M. Clark. "An unusual meteorite with an interesting orbit has been tracked to the ground using a photographic observatory that records time-lapse images of fireballs traveling across the sky.

NASA/JPL NEO Program. A newly discovered asteroid designated 2009 VA, which is only about 7 meters in size, passed about 2 Earth radii (14,000 km) from the Earth's surface Nov. 6 at around 16:30 EST. This is the third-closest known (non-impacting) Earth approach on record for a cataloged asteroid. The two closer approaches include the 1-meter sized asteroid 2008 TS26, which passed within 6,150 km of the Earth's surface on October 9, 2008, and the 7-meter sized asteroid 2004 FU162 that passed within 6,535 km on March 31, 2004. On average, objects the size of 2009 VA pass this close about twice per year and impact Earth about once every 5 years.

MPML/S. Degenhardt. Preliminary results of the occultation on Nov 21, 2009 by the potential binary asteroid (234) – view a 4 minute video

MPML/R.Stoss. MINOR PLANET CENTER EDITORIAL NOTICE. (Guidelines for submitting observations to the MPC)

General Observing Practices

The number of observers submitting astrometric observations to the MPC has risen rather dramatically in the past year. This has been accompanied by a rather worrying and troublesome increase in poor observing practice, with many sub-standard quality observations reported to the MPC.

Observers should strive to provide the best quality observations to the MPC. Poor quality observations cause the MPC significant extra work and reflect badly on the observer.

Some good practice advice follows:

* Observe each object at least three times over the course of an hour or so on each night. If the object is a known object, this can be relaxed to 30 minutes or more, as long as the motion of the object in that period is significant.

* Provide two nights of observation for "new" objects, obtaining three to six observations on each night, with at least one hour of coverage on each night.

* If you have a suspected new NEO, more than six observations may be useful if they are obtained over the course of several hours.

* In following-up interesting objects, provide good coverage of at least one hour.

* Never, under any circumstance, provide a single, isolated observation on a single night. A single observation shows no evidence of motion and there is no guarantee that the observer has not measured an image defect, a star or a variable object (star, nova or supernova).

* Stacked observations should always be marked as such and the individual images should be stacked so as to provide two observations, noting that an individual image can appear in only one stack. In very rare cases, a single stack may be all that is available: such situations will be handled on a case-by-case basis.

Please note that a new version of Astrometrica will be released which will add the ‘K’ stack code automatically (RD)

* Observations of "new" objects in support of discovery claims should be spaced by at least one and no more than five nights.

It is hoped that self-regulation by observers will be sufficient. If this does not prove to be the case by the end of this month, we will implement additional filters to reject automatically entire batches that contain single observations or new objects with insufficient nightly coverage.

"Corrected" Observations

Observers are informed that batches submitted with "corrected", "correction", "remeasured" or "remeasurement" in the subject line or ACK line are treated as being corrections to observations published previously and are filed by the automated routines for manual examination by MPC staff. The processing of such batches may be delayed.

It is also worth remarking that resubmission of observations or batches that were rejected by the automated AUTOACK routines do not need to be indicated as resubmissions, as the MPC has no
internal record of the original, rejected batch.

Observations of Dual-Status Objects

A number of objects are designated as both minor planets and comets. Examples include (2060) Chiron = 95P/Chiron and (4015) Wilson-Harrington = 107P/Wilson-Harrington. Astrometry of dual-status objects must be reported under the minor-planet designation, with the magnitudes reported in the asteroidal form. If observations are reported under the comet designation the AUTOACK routines
will change the designation into the minor-planet designation. If there are "nuclear" or "total" magnitudes reported on the observations this causes problems further down the processing pipeline because minor planets cannot be marked with "N" or "T" magnitudes.

Observing at Remote Sites

Observers who use multiple remote observing sites are requested to be extra vigilant in indicating where the observations were made. A number of observations have been received recently when, at the time of observation, the object was below or the sun was above the local horizon at the observing site.

Indication of Observers, Measurers and Telescope Details

In anticipation of the short-term plans for automatic MPEC preparation by the MPC, we remind observers that information given with the OBS, MEA and TEL keywords in the observational header must conform to the formats described here. Observers who do not adhere exactly to these instructions will find that their observations
on automatically-prepared MPECs will not be credited in the way they intended.

‘Naming Pluto’ – a DVD exploring the chain of events surrounding the naming of the planet (as it was then defined) Pluto. Reviewed in the 2009 Issue of the BAA Journal.

Websites which might be of interest

French Astronomical Society (SAF) planetary observations commission – Occultations, Eclipses and Transits

ARPS Website updates

The following pages have been updated;

Links

Books

Space missions

Asteroid news

Meetings

Observations received, Nov Dec 2009 Observations

December 2009

And first the good news. The next MACE (Meeting on Asteroids and Comets in Europe) will be held 2010 May 21-23 in Visnjan, Croatia where the very first MACE took place.

Occultation scan be recorded by the CCD drift scan method. How to do this can be found on John Broughton’s website which also references software, ScanTracker and ScanAnalyser, he wrote to do the job.

MPML/David Herald. LimovieAverage is a program that bins the measurements made by Limovie, and normalises the measurements on the basis of a comparison object. Its use is relevant to measuring the light curve of an object. The zip file is available for download at: http://www.asteroidoccultation.com/observations/

The direct download address is: http://www.asteroidoccultation.com/observations/LimovieAverage.zip

MPML/Hristo Pavlov. Following the release of Occult 4.0.7.0 here is the new minor update of OccultWatcher that can now recognize the double star flag from the new Occult predictions and will display events that involve known double stars on a red background. This should be an indication for you that the star coordinates used for the prediction may have a bigger error and for such events bigger path shifts should be anticipated. This doesn't mean that those predictions are not good, it only means you should treat them as being more likely to have a path shift and take this into consideration when planning a mobile station for example. If you have a version of C2A lower than 2.0.35 installed on your system; uninstall it through the Windows Configuration Panel, download the full 2.0.36 version from the C2A Web site and install it, in Occult Watcher, go into the configuration of the C2A Add-in and change the C2A access path from "C:\Program Files\C2a for Windows" to "C:\Program Files\C2A". If you have version 2.0.35 installed on your system; download the 2.0.36 C2A update from the C2A Web site and install it (it is much smaller than the full version), in Occult Watcher, go into the configuration of the C2A Add-in and make sure that the C2A access path is "C:\Program Files\C2A".

If you don't have C2A yet then go to http://www.astrosurf.com/c2a/english/download.htm

MPML/J Lecacheux. Asteroid (93) Minerva revealed to be a triple asteroid by astronomers using the 10m Keck telescope.

MPML/Andrea Milani. The proper elements, computed with the synthetic method, for more than 4,000 Hungaria asteroids are available on the AstDyS site at
http://hamilton.dm.unipi.it/astdys/index.php?pc=5 The theory behind this computation and many consequences, including the dynamical structure of the Hungaria region, the family classification, etc., are discussed in a preprint available from http://adams.dm.unipi.it/~milani/preprints/ This paper also contains a discussion on "close asteroid couples", which was actualy started on MPML in January 2008.

MPML/E P Grondine. Argentina can lay claim to the world's largest crater field, a volcanic area in Patagonia known as the "Devil's Slope," according to a study released Tuesday. Covering 400 square kilometers (154 square miles), the Bajada del Diablo field is peppered with at least 100 depressions left by the collisions of meteorites or comets 130,000 to 780,000 years ago, the study found.

MPML/Spacefilght Now. Craters on Vesta and Ceres could tell Jupiter's age
EUROPEAN PLANETARY SCIENCE CONGRESS NEWS RELEASE
September 14, 2009
Crater patterns on Vesta and Ceres could help pinpoint when Jupiter began to form during the evolution of the early Solar System. A study modeling the cratering history of the largest two objects in the asteroid belt, which are believed to be among the oldest in the Solar System, indicates that the type and distribution of craters would show marked changes at different stages of Jupiter's development. Results will be presented by Dr. Diego Turrini at the European Planetary Science
Congress in Potsdam, Germany, on Monday 14 September. The study, carried out by scientists at the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics in Rome, explored the hypothesis that one or both objects formed during Jupiter's formation by modeling their cratering histories during the birth of the giant planet. Their simulation described Jupiter's formation in three stages: an initial accretion of its core followed by a stage of rapid gas accretion. This is, in turn, followed by a phase where the gas accretion slows down while the giant planet reaches its final mass. During the last two phases Jupiter's gravitational pull starts to affect more and more distant objects. For each of these phases, the team simulated how Jupiter affected the orbits of asteroids and comets from the inner and outer Solar System, and the likelihood of them being moved onto a collision path with Vesta or Ceres. "We found that the stage of Jupiter's development made a big difference on the speed of impacts and the origin of potential impactors. When Jupiter's core approaches its critical mass, it causes a sharp increase in low-velocity impacts from small, rocky bodies orbiting nearby to Vesta and Ceres which lead to intense and uniform crater distribution patterns. These low-speed collisions may have helped Vesta and Ceres gather mass. Once Jupiter's core has formed and the planet starts to rapidly accrete gas, it deflects more distant objects onto a collision course with Ceres and Vesta and the impacts become more energetic. Although rocky objects from the inner Solar System are the dominant impactors at this stage, the higher energies of collisions with icy bodies from the outer Solar System make the biggest mark," said Dr. Turrini. The third stage of Jupiter's formation is complicated by a period known as the Late Heavy Bombardment, which occurred around 3.8 to 4.1 billion years ago. During this time a significant number of objects, rich in organic compounds, from the outer Solar System were injected on planet-crossing orbits with the giant planets and may have reached the Asteroid Belt. In addition, Jupiter is thought to have migrated in its orbit around this time, which would have caused an addition flux of impactors on Vesta and Ceres. The team will have an opportunity to confirm their results when NASA's Dawn space mission reaches Vesta in 2011 and then flies on for a further rendezvous with Ceres in 2015. Dawn will gather information on the structure and the surface morphology of the two asteroids and send back high-resolution images of crater patterns. "If we can see evidence of an underlying intense, uniform crater pattern, it will support the theory that one or both of these minor planets formed during the final phases of Jupiter accretion, provided that they aren't obliterated by the later heavy bombardment. Dawn will also measure concentrations of organic material, which may give us further information about the collisional history with organic-rich objects from the outer Solar System," said Dr. Turrini.

MPML/Ron Balke. In Search of Dark Asteroids (and Other Sneaky Things)
NASA Science News
September 15, 2009
Ninjas knew how to be stealthy: Be dark. Emit very little light. Move in the shadows between bright places. In modern warfare, though, ninjas would be sitting ducks. Their black clothes may be hard to see at night with the naked eye, but their warm bodies would be clearly visible to a soldier wearing infrared goggles.
To hunt for the "ninjas" of the cosmos - dim objects that lurk in the vast dark spaces between planets and stars - scientists are building by far the most sensitive set of wide-angle infrared goggles ever, a space telescope called the Widefield Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE). WISE will scan the entire sky at infrared wavelengths, creating the most comprehensive catalog yet of dark and dim objects in the cosmos: vast dust clouds, brown dwarf stars, asteroids - even large, nearby asteroids that might pose a threat to Earth. Surveys of nearby asteroids based on visible-light telescopes could be skewed toward asteroids with more-reflective surfaces. "If there's a significant population of asteroids nearby that are very dark, they will have been missed by these previous surveys," says Edward Wright, principal investigator for WISE and a physicist at the University of California in Los Angeles. The full-sky infrared map produced by WISE will reveal even these darker asteroids, mapping the locations and sizes of roughly 200,000 asteroids and giving scientists a clearer idea of how many large and potentially dangerous asteroids are nearby. WISE will also help answer questions about the formation of stars and the evolution and structure of galaxies, including our own Milky Way. And the discoveries won't likely stop there. "When you look at the sky with new sensitivity and a new wavelength band, like WISE is going to do, you're going to find new things that you didn't know were out there," Wright says. Stars emit visible light in part because they're so hot. But cooler objects like asteroids emit light too, just at longer, infrared wavelengths that are invisible to the unaided eye. In fact, any object warmer than absolute zero will emit at least some infrared light. Unfortunately, this fact makes building an infrared telescope rather difficult. Without a coolant, the telescope itself would glow in infrared light just like all other warm objects do. It would be like building a normal, visible-light telescope out of Times Square billboard lights: The telescope would be blinded by its own glow. To solve this problem, WISE will cool its components to about 15°C above absolute zero (or -258°C) using a block of solid hydrogen. Mission scientists chose solid hydrogen over liquid helium, which is often used in research for cooling materials to near absolute zero, because a smaller volume of solid hydrogen can do the job. "The cooling power is much higher for hydrogen than for helium," Wright explains. When launching a telescope into space, being smaller and lighter saves money. Previous space telescopes such as the Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS) have mapped the sky at infrared wavelengths before, but WISE will be hundreds of times more sensitive. While other missions could only see diffuse sources of infrared light such as large dust clouds, WISE will be able to see asteroids and other point sources. After it launches into orbit as early as this December, WISE will spend 6 months mapping the sky, during which it will download its data to ground stations 4 times each day. Analyzing that data should give scientists some new insights into the cosmos. For example, one theory posits that most of the stars in the Universe were formed in the press of colliding galaxies. When galaxies collide, interstellar clouds of gas and dust smash together, compressing the clouds and starting a self-perpetuating cycle of gravitational collapse. The result is a flurry of starbirth. Newborn stars are usually concealed by the dusty clouds they are born in. Ordinary light cannot escape, but infrared light can. WISE will be able to detect infrared emissions from the most active star-forming regions. This will help scientists know how rapidly stars are formed during galactic collisions, which could indicate how many of the universe's stars were formed this way. WISE will also target dim "failed stars" called brown dwarfs that outnumber ordinary stars by a wide margin. Mapping brown dwarfs in the Milky Way may reveal much about the structure and evolution of our own galaxy. And this could be just the beginning of the discoveries scientists make once WISE puts the spotlight on stealthy denizens of the dark.

MPML. Richard Kowalski, the discoverer of asteroid 2008 TC3, now has his own piece of it thanks to funds raised by MPML subscribers lead by Herbert Raab.

MPML/Brian D Warner. The free electronic download for The Minor Planet Bulletin 36-4 (2009 October-December) is now available at
http://www.minorplanetobserver.com/mpb/default.htm This has 62 pages, bringing the volume 36 total to 194 pages. The MPB is going almost all-electronic starting with 37-1 (2010 January-March). See the full details on page 194 of the 36-4 issue. Includes papers by ARPS members Peter Birtwhistle and Roger Dymock.

MPML/E P Grondine. Personally signed copies of my book "Man and Impact in the Americas", my catalogue of recent comet and asteroid impacts in the Americas and the First Peoples' memories of them, are available to MPML participants for $20, plus $5 shipping US ($25), or plus $15 shipping overseas ($35 total). This is a much lower price than $35 through Amazon. Orders may be sent to E.P. Grondine, P.O. Box 158, Kempton, IL 60946. Be sure to add any special signing requests you may have (for example if the copy is a gift), and especially mention to me if you have Native American ancestry.

Websites which might be of interest

Asteroid home page

Breit Ideas Observatory

Distant EKO’s – The Kuiper Belt Electronic Newsletter

Urey Prize Lecture: Binary Minor Planets

Koronis Family Asteroids Rotation Lightcurve Observing Program

John Sussenbach - Digital Astroimaging using Webcam

Photometry of Asteroids at The Belgrade Astronomical Observatory

ARPS Website updates

What to observe page - ARPS input to 2010 BAA Handbook added

Meetings page – new meetings added

Asteroid news page – reference to (93) Minerva being a binary added

Links page – websites listed above added

What to observe page – reference to drift-scan timing added

October 2009

Surprise Collision on Jupiter Captured by Gemini Telescope. Jupiter is sporting a glowing bruise after getting unexpectedly whacked by a small solar system object, according to astronomers using the Gemini North telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawai'i. A spectacular new mid-infrared image is available for download. The new feature on Jupiter was first seen by Australian amateur astronomer Anthony Wesley on July 19th. The object that caused the impact scar could have been a small comet or asteroid. Using the SL9 impacts as a guide, the impacting object was probably just a few hundreds of meters in diameter. Such small bodies are nearly impossible to detect near or beyond Jupiter unless they reveal cometary activity, or, as in this case, make their presence known by impacting a giant planet. The impact site is dark in visible-wavelength images. This mid-infrared composite image was obtained with the Gemini North telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawai'i, on 22 July at ~13:30 UT with the MICHELLE mid-infrared spectrograph/imager. The impact site is the bright yellow spot at the center bottom of Jupiter's disk. The image was constructed from two images: one at 8.7 micron (blue) and one at 9.7 micron (yellow). The excellent quality of the Gemini images reveals that the morphology of this new impact bears a striking resemblance to that of the larger impact sites seen after the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 crashed into Jupiter in 1994. The impact was also imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory is introducing a new Web site that will provide a centralized resource for information on near-Earth objects – those asteroids and comets that can approach Earth. The "Asteroid Watch" site also contains links for the interested public to sign up for NASA's new asteroid widget and Twitter account. The new Asteroid Watch site is online at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/asteroidwatch .

According to a new interim report (also here) from the National Research Council, NASA’s current near-Earth object surveys will not meet the congressionally mandated goal of discovering 90 percent of all objects over 140 meters in diameter by 2020.

New research may have answered a piece to the puzzle - how big were the first planetesimals? The paper, "Asteroids Were Born Big" is available now online from the ScienceDirect website and will be available in a future edition of the journal Icarus. It is also available here.

The Late Heavy Bombardment may have been more cometary than asteroidal. Paper here.

Jupiter targeted again. Antony Wesley’s observations.

The UCAC3 catalog will be released in 2009 August

Website updates

The Space Missions page includes details on all missions to asteroids.

– WISE, is a NASA-funded Explorer mission, to be launched in 2009 December. Among the objects WISE will study are asteroids, the coolest and dimmest stars, and the most luminous galaxies.

The Asteroid News page contains details of recent discoveries;

– companion to 2002 XH91 discovered

– 1994 CC found to be a triple asteroid

See Meetings page for details on all known meetings)

– The Malta Symposium on Hazardous Near Earth Asteroids will be held at the Russian Cultural and Scientific Center on Malta 2009 October 12-16
– This is a preliminary notice to announce that European Symposium on Occultation Projects (ESOP) XXIX will be held in the City of York, UK, from Friday August 20 to Tuesday August 24, 2010 (inclusive dates). The LOC has secured the York University Conference Centre and accommodation for the above dates.

Observations from members received during July and August 2009 can be accessed here.

Websites added to the Links page

– Lunar and Planetary Institute – Terrestrial Impact Craters, Second Edition

– NASA’s JPL Asteroid Watch

– Martin Mobberley’s new website

August 2009

Paper ‘A method of determining V magnitudes of asteroids from CCD images’ by Richard Miles and Roger Dymock published in the June 2009 issue of the BAA Journal can be found here. RECOMMENDED READING FOR ALL INTERESTED IN PHOTOMETRY.

Occult Version 4.0.6.7 can be downloaded from http://www.lunar-occultations.com/occult4/occult406%20update.zip Most users of Occult will not need to download this update. However note the 'Other changes' below. Anyone predicting Asteroid Occultations ***should*** download the update. The main change in this version concerns the probability estimates for occultations involving slow-moving asteroids. For all occultation predictions, there is an along-track uncertainty that is indicated as an uncertainty in the time of the event. That uncertainty necessarily involves a corresponding uncertainty in the rotational orientation of the Earth. Up until now, that uncertainty in the orientation of the Earth has not been allowed for in the prediction uncertainty - mainly because the effect is usually very small. However when the asteroid motion across the Earth is slow, the effect can be significant. This version adjusts the 1-sigma uncertainty lines, and the predicted uncertainty at a location, for this effect. This correction has immediate relevance for the occultation by Philosophia in Europe on May 2. The 1-sigma uncertainty lines are several 10's of km further separated from the central path. And the event probability within the path drops in value by about 3% - from about 28% to 25%.

Other changes included are:

- on the main form, access to the 7-Timer weather prediction for your 'home' site (limited to cloud and temperature). This provides ready access to a 3-day cloud forecast.

- for lunar occultations, provided some base functionality for reporting double star observations - including the ability to copy and paste a LiMovie light curve directly into an email message from the

clipboard..

Dave Herald

Canberra, Australia

Details of 2009 Planetary Society Gene Shoemaker Near Earth Object grants to Russell Durkee of Minn., Robert E. Holmes, Jr of Ill., and Gary Hug of Kansas can be found here.

An updated list of Damocloids can be found here.

A procedure developed by Adam Block and Ron Wodaski describing the use of Astrometrica can be accessed here.

A minor update of OccultWatcher and the IOTA Reporting Addin has been released. It can be accessed via Help/Check for updates and following the link to update. All resolved issues are minor except for a bug where version 1.0 of the IOTA Reporting Addin would fill in incorrectly the UCAC2 star number in the excel reports in some cases.

The New Horizons team is fondly remembering Venetia Burney Phair, the “little girl” who named Pluto, who died April 30 at her home in England at age 90. “Venetia's interest and success in naming Pluto as a schoolgirl caught the attention of the world and earned her a place in the history of planetary astronomy that lives on,” says New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern. In 2006, the New Horizons team named the spacecraft's student dust counter instrument in her honor, calling it the "Venetia Burney Student Dust Counter." For the full story, visit: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/news_center/news/20090508.php.

The Astronomer reports; (6708) BOBBIEVAILE. D. Pray, Carbuncle Observatory, W. Brookfield, MA, U.S.A. et. al., report that photometric observations obtained Apr. 16 to May 3 reveal that minor planet (6708) is a binary system with an orbital period of 24.7 hr according to CBET 1794. The primary shows a period of 8.221 +/- 0.002 hr, assuming a bi-modal light curve, and it has a light curve amplitude of 0.08 mag, suggesting a nearly spheroidal shape. Mutual eclipse/occultation events with a depth of 0.31 mag indicate a lower limit on the secondary-to-primary mean-diameter ratio of 0.57.

The UK Spaceguard Centre in Knighton run by Jay Tate has a new telescope

Minor Planet Bulletin issue 36-3 (2009 July-September) is available as a free PDF download

Asteroid discovery statistics can be accessed here. Amateurs are still doing quite well it would seem.

From the Minor planet Mailing List

May 20, 2009
Dwayne Brown
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1726
dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov
Jim Scott
University of Colorado, Boulder
303-492-3114
jim.scott@colorado.edu
RELEASE: 09-111
NASA STUDY SHOWS ASTEROIDS MAY HAVE ACCELERATED LIFE ON EARTH
WASHINGTON -- A NASA-funded study indicates that an intense asteroid bombardment nearly 4 billion years ago may not have sterilized the early Earth as completely as previously thought. The asteroids, some the size of Kansas, possibly even provided a boost for early life. The study focused on a particularly cataclysmic occurrence known as the Late Heavy Bombardment, or LHB. This event occurred approximately 3.9 billion years ago and lasted 20 to 200 million years. In a letter published in the May 21 issue of Nature magazine titled "Microbial Habitability of the Hadean Earth during the Late Heavy Bombardment," Oleg Abramov and Stephen J. Mojzsis, astrobiologists at the University of Colorado's Department of Geological Sciences, report on the results of a computer modeling project designed to study the heating of Earth by the bombardment. Results from their project show that while the Late Heavy Bombardment might have generated enough heat to sterilize Earth's surface, microbial life in subsurface and underwater environments almost certainly would have survived. "Exactly when life originated on Earth is a hotly debated topic," said Michael H. New, the astrobiology discipline scientist and manager of the Exobiology and Evolutionary Biology Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "These findings are significant because they indicate that if life had begun before the LHB or some time prior to 4 billion years ago, it could have survived in limited refuges and then expanded to fill our world." "Our new results point to the possibility life could have emerged about the same time that evidence for our planet's oceans first appears," said Mojzsis, principal investigator of the project. A growing scientific consensus is that during our solar system's formation, planetary bodies were pummeled by debris throughout the Late Heavy Bombardment. A visual record of the event is preserved in the form of the scarred face of our moon. On Earth, all traces of the bombardment appear to have been erased by rock recycling forces like weathering, volcanoes or other conditions that cause the crust to move or change. Surface habitats for microbial life on early Earth would have been destroyed repeatedly by the bombardment. However, at the same time, impacts could have created subsurface habitats for life, such as extensive networks of cracks or even hydrothermal vents. Any existing
microbial life on Earth could have found refuge in these habitats. If life had not yet emerged on Earth by the time of the bombardment, these new subsurface environments could have been the place where
terrestrial life emerged. "Even under the most extreme conditions we imposed on our model, the bombardment could not have sterilized Earth completely," said Abramov, lead author of the paper. "Our results are in line with the scientific consensus that hyperthermophilic, or 'heat-loving,' microbes could have been the earliest life forms on Earth, or survivors from an even more ancient biosphere. The results also support the potential for the persistence of microbial biospheres on other planetary bodies whose surfaces were reworked by the bombardment, including Mars." NASA's Astrobiology Program's Exobiology and Evolutionary Biology Program and the NASA Astrobiology Institute at NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif., through its support of NASA's Postdoctoral Program, provided funding for this research. The Astrobiology Program supports research into the origin, evolution, distribution and future of life on Earth and the potential for life elsewhere.
For more information about NASA's astrobiology activities, visit: http://astrobiology.nasa.gov

If you are interested in Solar System dynamics then give Solex a try.

AIP4WIN version 2.3.0 is now available.

LISA, the joint NASA/ESA mission to study gravitational waves may be able to measure the mass of nearby asteroids. Passing asteroids may cause the three LISA satellites to wobble in a small but distinctive way. The paper will be published in Classical and Quantum Gravity – http://www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/0264-9381/26/8/085003

ESO 16/09 – Science Release. A new study published in Nature this week reveals that asteroid surfaces age and redden much faster than previously thought — in less than a million years, the blink of an eye for an asteroid. This study has finally confirmed that the solar wind is the most likely cause of very rapid space weathering in asteroids. This fundamental result will help astronomers relate the appearance of an asteroid to its actual history and identify any after effects of a catastrophic impact with another asteroid.

The STEREO spacecraft are entering the Earth’s L4 and L5 points which may hold small asteroids which could be leftovers from the collision between the Earth and a Mars sized body 4.5 billion years ago. More detail.

Peter Jenniskens led an expedition into the Nubian desert to recover hundreds of fragments from asteroid 2008 TC3 that exploded over the skies of Sudan last October. Astronomy Now interview

For the last two years, astronomers have suspected that a nearby white dwarf star called GD 362 was "snacking" on a shredded asteroid. Now, an analysis of chemical "crumbs" in the star's atmosphere conducted by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has confirmed this suspicion. Read more and more

Websites of interest that have been added to the Links page;

Minor Planet Lightcurve Data collected by Frederick Pilcher, a member of The Astronomical Society of Las Cruces

Bagnall Beach Observatory

Astrometry ‘how-to’ by Tim Spahr of the Minor Planet Center

Portal to the universe. Although not an asteroid specific site it does include asteroid info and, as they say, much, much, more!!!

April 2009

Data on the close pass of asteroids 2009 DD45, 2009 DO111 and 2009 FH added to Asteroid News page.

A Yahoo group for Project Pluto’s Find_Orb software has been set up at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/find_orb

OccultWatcher 3.2 has been released and can be downloaded from http://www.hristopavlov.net/OccultWatcher/publish.htm

Philippe Deverchère has released a new version of C2A that can now draw prepoint maps for occultation events. You'll need to download and install C2A ver 2.0.31 to be able to do that. There is also a new version of the C2A Add-in for OccultWatcher. You can download this using the update process in Occult Watcher Go 'Help' -> 'Check for Updates' and then click on the update link to update the C2A Add-in. Then Go 'Add-ins' -> 'Configure Add-ins' -> 'C2A Add-in' to configure the new settings.

A new version of Occult is available and can be downloaded from IOTA website

Asteroid 7102 has been named after Neil Bone, Director of the BAA’s Meteor Section.

The April-June 2009 issue of The Minor Planet Bulletin can be download from here

The presentation on 2008 TC3 has been updated with information relating to the discovery of fragments

The latest release of the Asteroid Lightcurve Database (LCDB) is now available on the CALL site: http://www.minorplanetobserver.com/astlc/LightcurveParameters.htm This release contains data on 3824 objects in 11014 detail records. This is 403 objects more than the 2008 March release.

A new page, Video processing, describing how to subtract dark frames and make astrometric measurements from video has been added.

February 2009

2009 BB77 was discovered by ARPS Director Richard Miles on 2009 January 30^th while imaging comet 17/P Holmes. Orbit diagram and details here (JPL NEO Program website)

(1) Ceres least distance from Earth for 150 years. Jean Meeus has indicated that the dwarf planet (1) Ceres approaches its least distance to the Earth (1.5832 AU) on 2009 February 25 between 2300-0000 UT. Jean tells me that the last time Ceres was nearer to the Earth than 1.5832 AU was on 1857 February 14, when its distance was 1.5815 AU. He has calculated future close approaches and has shown that no approach to the Earth closer than the present one takes place before A.D. 3000! Ceres will therefore be at its marginally greatest angular diameter (about 0.80x0.85 arcsec) at the moment. This does not mean it will be at its brightest since that depends on phase angle. On this occasion, Ceres attains a V magnitude of 6.88. Over the next 25 years, Ceres will actually be brightest on 2012 December 18 reaching V = 6.73. From Richard Miles, Director, Asteroids and Remote Planets Section.

If you want to know how Gauss worked out the orbit of (1) Ceres then read this

Version 4.0.5.20 of Occult is now available at: http://www.lunar-occultations.com/occult4/occult405%20update.zip Just unzip the download file into the Occult 4 directory. A full list of the changes is in the file Updates.txt that will be in the Occult 4 directory.

Fragments of asteroid 2008 TC3 which, exploded in the atmosphere over Sudan in October, have been recovered. Further details here and here

To estimate the approximate shape of an asteroid from occultation data usually requires positive reports from several observers however Andreas Eberle has developed a method of doing so from a single observation. A report can be accessed here.

A guide to asteroid discovery has been published on the website of the Sierra Stars Observatory Network This network comprises two robotic telescope on which amateurs can buy time.

Eleanor "Glo" Helin passed away in late January 2009. She was one of the pioneers of the search for Near Earth objects (NEO’s) and established and led the NEAT Project at JPL. The NEAT Program discovered hundreds of NEO’s, many comets, and 64 Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHA’s).

From BAA electronic bulletin 00380 – (7102) Neilbone. The following citation has appeared in M.P.C. 65121: (the asteroid was) discovered in 1936 July 12 by C. Jackson at Johannesburg. Neil Bone (b. 1959), a British observer and author of several books, founded the Aurora Section of what is now the Society for Popular Astronomy in 1981 and became director of the British Astronomical Association's Meteor Section in 1992. He also compiles the "Society News" notes for Astronomy Now. We offer our sincere congratulations to Neil, not only for his accomplishments as described above but also for his many other achievements. Roger Pickard, President

A recent article in the RAS magazine ‘The Tunguska impact event and beyond’ by Bill Napier and David Asher referred to the website of the Holocene Impact Working Group The group includes researchers from different field of geoscience who believed that Holocene comet impacts were more frequent in the recent past than the accepted view. The Members and Publications pages list a number of books and papers.

Magnitude Alert Program (MAP) Alert Page for 2009 is here

A team of French and Italian astronomers have devised a new method for measuring the size and shape of asteroids that are too small or too far away for traditional techniques, increasing the number of asteroids that can be measured by a factor of several hundred. This method takes advantage of the unique capabilities of ESO's Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI). ESO 04/09 – Science Release

The MESSENGER spacecraft reached its orbital perihelion on 2009 Feb 9 and passed within 0.31 astronomical units (AU) of the Sun. The mission's imaging team is taking advantage of the probe's proximity to the Sun to continue their search for vulcanoids - small, rocky asteroids that have been postulated to circle the Sun in stable orbits inside the orbit of Mercury.

A paper ‘Long term impact risk for (101955) 1999 RQ36’ is available here

The Catalina Sky Survey (CSS) has set a new record for NEO discoveries - 565 in 2008 which breaks its 2007 record of 460.

A new book well worth a read. ‘The Hunt for Planet X – New Worlds and the Fate of Pluto’ by Govert Schilling, published by Springer (£14.25). The book is about the discovery of the Edgeworth – Kuiper belt and strongly focuses on the human side of the story, with many personal anecdotes. Probably the first popular-level book that gives an in-depth description of the discovery of Eris (2003 UB313), covers the row over the discovery priority of Haumea (2003 EL61) and the 'demotion' of Pluto from planet to dwarf planet. Don’t forget to buy your books at Amazon via the BAA Journal website

2008 December

Please note that the BAA Observers’ Workshop, Asteroids Comets and Meteors, scheduled to take place in February 2009 has been postponed

Asteroid and Dwarf Planet data for 2009 has been added to the What to Observe page.

Observations by the Spitzer Space Telescope have revealed two asteroid belts around the star Epsilon Eridani

A paper describing the YORP effect in asteroid (1620) Geographis can be found here

A light curve of NEO 2008 TT26 can be found here and an image here

2008 TC3 burnt up in the atmosphere over northern Sudan on 2008 October 7. A PowerPoint presentation put together (mainly) from MPML postings can be viewed here (updated 2008 December 17)

A new, intermediate release of the Asteroid Lightcurve Database (LCDB) maintained by Alan Harris, Petr Pravec and Brian D. Warner is available on the CALL site at http://www.minorplanetobserver.com/astlc/LightcurveParameters.htm Please note that it has yet to be completely cross- checked hence the ‘intermediate’ release

Pan-STARRS news

The new AstDys information system is now at; http://hamilton.dm.unipi.it/astdys

A dedicated follower of asteroids rather than fashion but possibly that as well !!. Peter Birtwhistle is about to or will have surpassed exactly 10,000 astrometric measures of near-Earth asteroids. He is currently at 9,880 and has also reported a further few thousand astrometric positions of asteroids that happened not to

turn out as NEOs. His very first one was 2002 LG3 on 2002 June 10/11 so it is an impressive statistic and is a monumental achievement requiring dedication, etc. in the face of the English weather! To put it in perspective, Siding Spring in Australia with a professional, Rob McNaught at the helm and others helping out have only managed 12,258 to date! I suspect that Peter has been the most successful and productive at performing NEO follow-up of all amateurs worldwide. Jim McGaha (Sabino Canyon, 854) in Tucson, Arizona started before Peter and is only up to 2,919. (Note by Richard Miles for the Skynotes presentation at the December 2008 meeting of the British Astronomical Association).

Issue 36-1 (2009 January-March) of the Minor Planet Bulletin is available as a free download from
http://www.minorplanetobserver.com/mpb/default.htm

Asteroid families can be identified by their colour – paper here

Websites added to links page;

Sloan Digital Sky Survey

Impact calculator – informative and simple to use

Crni Vrh Observatory – Asteroid and Comet Observations

The UK NEO Information Centre has a new website address

2008 October

On 2008 October 29 Richard Miles became the new Section Director and Roger Dymock assumed the role of Section Web Site Manager

2008 SV11 – an observing project for the New Year. See ‘What to Observe/Observing projects/Asteroid 2008 SV11’ page for further information

2008 TC3 burnt up in the atmosphere over northern Sudan on 2008 October 7. A PowerPoint presentation put together (mainly) from MPML postings can be viewed here

Close approaches of Potentially Hazardous Asteroids to the inner planets by Andrew Lowe. Andrew’s website has some interesting information on the use of on-line archives to discover asteroids.

Some developments in the reporting of absolute magnitudes can be found here

‘The Great Planet Debate: Science as Process’ conference can be accessed here

The Association of Space Explorers report ‘Asteroid threats: A Call for Global Response’. News and presskit

Observations recently received from members can be found here

Websites added to Links page;

Desert Moon Observatory

Goodricke-Pigott Observatory

International Occultation Timing Association (IOTA)

Occultation Section of the Royal Astronomical Society of New Zealand

Shed of Science

Observatorio Nazaret

New book, Field Guide to Meteors and Meteorites added to Books page

BAA Observers’ Workshop No. 10, ‘Asteroids, Meteors and Comets’ added to Meetings page. Note date may change.

2008 September

Study demonstrates how binary asteroids and asteroid moons might have formed

Dwarf planet 2005 FY9 named Makemake after the Polynesian creator of humanity and the god of fertility – IAU press release IAU0806

‘Bolides and Meteorite Falls’ International conference on the occasion of the 50^th anniversary of the Pribram meteorite fall to be held at the Hotel Michael, Prague, Czech Republic, 2009 May 10-15

Rosetta spacecraft - asteroid (2867) Steins fly by

1st IAA Planetary Defense Conference, Protecting Earth from Asteroids, to be held in Granada, Spain 2009 April 27-30

MIT solves puzzle of meteorite-asteroid link

Astronomers find an unusual new denizen of the Solar System – 2006 SQ372

Minor Planet Bulletin 35-4 (Oct-Dec 2008) is now available as a free download (Zipped PDF)

International Team of Astronomers Finds Missing Link (not early man but an asteroid, 2008 KV42, possibly originating from the Oort Cloud !!!)

Possible existence of an outer planet beyond the Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt and much more by Patryk Sofia Lykawka

Two articles previously published in the Journal of the British Astronomical Association have been added to this website;

- ‘Asteroids: past, present and future’. 2007 Presidential Address by Richard Miles

- ‘The H and G magnitude system for asteroids’ based on 2007 February 24 BAA Observers’ Workshop at the Open University in Milton Keynes by Roger Dymock

Two books have been added to the ‘Books’ section

‘Setting up a Small Observatory’ by David Arditti

‘Clyde Tombaugh, Discoverer of Planet Pluto’ by David H. Levy

Two robotic telescope sites have been added to the ‘Links’ page

- Skylive

- Bradford Robotic Telescope

Observations recently received from members can be found here

2008 July

Canada to launch NEOSSAT in 2010 to hunt for Near Earth Objects – more info here

Asteroid 6137 named after John Fletcher – more info here

Orbit@home is a distributed computing project to NEA search strategies and to monitor the NEA impact hazard

List of asteroid masses is available here

Pluto and Eris are Plutoids as well as dwarf planets – read IAU Press release IAU0804 for the full story

The Asteroid Dynamics website has a new interface under test here

The latest Minor Planet Bulletin, 35-3: 2008 July-September, is available as a PDF here