Posted on 10/16/2003 10:39:44 AM PDT by blam
Long-lost near-Earth asteroid spotted
17:35 16 October 03
NewScientist.com news service
A large and potentially hazardous asteroid that went missing for almost 66 years ago was re-discovered by astronomers on Wednesday morning. The good news is that its next fly-by, on 4 November, will miss the Earth by a relatively comfortable seven million kilometres.
Asteroid 1937 UB, later dubbed Hermes, set a record for closest recorded approach to the Earth on 30 October 1937. The record lasted for 50 years. Hermes is one to two kilometres in diameter and would cause global devastation if it hit the planet.
So, given its near approach, observers in 1937 were extremely keen to characterise its orbit and assess whether future passes would target the Earth. But with only four days of observations, Hermes was lost soon after it passed by.
Its rediscovery was an accident. Brian Skiff, of the Lowell Observatory in Arizona, spotted an interesting bright object with the LONEOS telescope in the early hours of Wednesday morning. Recognising from its motion that it was close to the Earth, he alerted the Minor Planet Center at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
Tim Spahr was up before dawn on the US east coast checking asteroid reports for the Minor Planet Center, and posted an alert asking other astronomers to make confirming observations.
Track back
Before the Sun rose in California, Jim Young saw it and made independent observations at the Table Mountain Observatory that helped narrow down the orbit. With this data, Spahr and others were able to track down unrecognised observations of the asteroid dating back to 26 August.
Then Brian Marsden, at the Minor Planet Center, combined the observations and calculated an orbit close to that of the long-lost Hermes - and revealing the safe fly-by on 4 November. The new orbit does not match the original one perfectly, but gravitational perturbation caused by the asteroid's close approaches to Earth and Venus could account for the variation.
Marsden hopes astronomers can pin down the orbit better by making radar observations as the asteroid passes Earth. "I would be very surprised if it wasn't Hermes," Marsden told New Scientist.
Hermes has been on asteroid-hunters' wish list for a long time. "It's the traditional long-lost one that really came close," says Marsden, who calculated an orbit 1969.
Others had continued searching without success, although in 2001 Lutz Schmadel and Joachim Schubart of the University of Heidelberg predicted that October 2003 would be a good time to look.
Jeff Hecht
BTW, is it related to the spotted owl?
I was just discussing this subject with my son in Glendora last night. I couldn't remember where I read that. Thanks
Actually, that is an underestimate...several billion more who haven't even been born yet will have died by 2123.
The correct NYT/Boston Globe headline is:
World to End Friday
Women, Minorities Disparately Impacted, Experts Say
Hmmmm! Maybe I should get the olde surfboard out and waxed.
I defer to your porper grammar... :))
Recognising from its motion that it was close to the Earth, he alerted the Minor Planet Center at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. [picture this phone call in your mind]. . . Lutz Schmadel and Joachim Schubart . . . predicted that October 2003 would be a good time to look.[picture these guys]
(HIT forehead) I defer to your proper use of standard English and grammar. :))
That's just over 7 hours in Earth's orbit around the sun.
66 years ago
That's .082% margin of error in the calculations between observations.
Actually, I was just reading the New York Times style book. It says right here on page 27 that any time there's a catastrophe, the subhead needs to contain one of a selection of similar lines to the one sited. They conveniently supply a list of experts who will reliably back up the disparate impact claims, most of who are Professors at Ivy League universities.
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