THE ASTRONOMER Electronic Circular No 2489
2008 Oct 07 06.48UT
Ed:Guy M Hurst, 16,Westminster Close, Kempshott Rise, Basingstoke,
Hants, RG22 4PP,England.
INTERNET: GUY@TAHQ.DEMON.
WORLD WIDE WEB http://www.theastro
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2008 TC_3
Peter Birtwhistle, Great Shefford initially drew our attention on October
6 to a NEOCP object 8TA9D69 on what appeared to be an almost certain
collision course with Earth (estimated initially at 02:52 UT), probably
somewhere over southern Europe/India potentially. He has subsequently imaged the
object for which details are awaited.
Images of the object were alo obtained on October 6 at 20h26m, 20h32m,
20h39mUT and submitted to us by Giovanni Sostero, V Gonano, Ernesto Guido and P.
Camilleri. These were obtained with a 0.45-m f4.4 reflector + IMG-1001E as
the median of 20 unfiltered exposures of 10 seconds each. At the time the object
was about 0.00113AU (about 170,000km).
Dan Green, Central Bureau for Astronomical
Telegrams also reports on IAU Circular 8990 that a small asteroidal object (absolute
magnitude H = 30.4, suggesting a few metres in size) discovered by the Mt.
Lemmon Survey (observer R. A. Kowalski) on Oct. 6.28 UT at Delta = 0.0033 AU (about
1.27 the moon's distance from the earth) will enter the earth's atmosphere over
northern Sudan (according to S. Chesley, Jet Propulsion Laboratory) around
Oct. 7.115, moving west to east. Prior to entering the atmosphere, it may
be around visual mag 11. Astrometry, orbital elements, and ephemerides are given
on MPECs 2008-T50, 2008-T51, and 2008-T52.
Mark Kidger (Herschel Science Centre, European Space Agency European Space
Astronomy Centre reports: Spanish observers from the "Observadores_
The asteroid brightened from R=16.7 approximately at 20:22UT to R=15.5 at
22:50UT before initiating a more rapid rate of brightening. At 00:46 a brightest
magnitude of R=13.6 was measured. The last few data points show some rapid
irregular fluctuations in brightness due to difficulties in measuring such a
fast-moving object.
A continuously updated light curve is available at: http://www.astrosur
Guy M Hurst