From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Tue Sep 10 2002 - 12:07:51 MDT
Some of you folks may like this... A 50 day orbit seems
way too far away to be useful for secret militaty purposes.
If it turns out to be a small asteroid orbiting the Earth,
I wonder how much effort would be required to move it into
a closer orbit?
> ==========================================================
> MYSTERY OBJECT
>
> Since September 5th, the Minor Planet Mailing List (MPML)
> has been abuzz with speculation about an unidentified 16th-
> magnitude object. During the next 10 days the object will be
> moving rapidly across Aries and then Taurus, passing between
> the Pleiades and Hyades star clusters.
>
> Bill Yeung discovered the object September 3rd in CCD images
> taken with an 0.45-meter telescope in Benson, Arizona. The
> fast-mover was "auto detected" when he analyzed his images
> with DC-3 Dreams' PinPoint software. Yeung e-mailed the
> positions to the Minor Planet Center (MPC) in Cambridge,
> Massachusetts ( http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/mpc.html ),
> which quickly posted the object on its Near-Earth
> Object Confirmation Page under the temporary designation
> J002E3. But within a few days the MPC removed the object
> from that listing; preliminary orbit calculations
> suggested it was traveling in a large, 50-day orbit around
> the Earth, not the Sun. It had all the earmarks of being a
> spent rocket casing or other piece of "space junk" instead
> of a true minor planet.
>
> But what exactly is it? Efforts by Tony Beresford in Australia
> and other satellite experts have failed to match this object
> with any known artificial satellite. Photometric measurements
> by Peter Kusnirak in the Czech Republic failed to show much
> variation in brightness, as would be expected of a small
> metallic object, especially if cylindrical. But the big
> question is, if it is really in Earth orbit, why has it not
> been detected before? In Yeung's words, 16th magnitude should
> have made it "a piece of cake" for survey telescopes like
> LINEAR and NEAT, or for CCD-equipped amateur instruments,
> to locate long ago.
>
> Finally, late on September 9th, Paul Chodas (Jet Propulsion
> Laboratory) weighed in with this posting to the MPML:
>
> "The unusual object J002E3, formerly on the Minor
> Planet Center NEO confirmation page, has been loaded
> into our Horizons system so that interested observers
> can generate ephemerides.... Further observations of
> the object are highly desirable to help characterize
> the nature of the object: we will update our orbit
> solution as they become available.
>
> "Telnet and email users of Horizons can access this
> object by typing 'J002E3'. Web users of Horizons can
> access the object by going to the Major Body Menu,
> selecting the Spacecraft list, and choosing the entry
> 'J002E3 Spacecraft (UNCONFIRMED)'. The available
> time span is currently August 1 through December 1,
> 2002. The telnet address of Horizons
> is <telnet://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov:6775/>, and the web
> address is <<http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/eph>>."
>
> For the full text, or to subscribe to the Minor Planet Mailing
> List, please visit these URLs:
>
> MPML Home page ( http://www.bitnik.com/mp )
> MPML FAQ ( http://www.bitnik.com/mp/MPML-FAQ.html )
> MPML's Yahoogroups page ( http://www.yahoogroups.com/group/mpml )
>
> Amateurs who are experienced in astrometry should have no
> trouble recording this mystery object with CCD-equipped 8-inch
> and larger telescopes. Measurements should be sent both to
> Chodas (paul.chodas@jpl.nasa.gov) and to the Minor Planet
> Center (mpc@cfa.harvard.edu) using the standard reporting
> format.
>
> We don't provide an ephemeris in this AstroAlert because, like
> 2002 NY40 a few weeks ago, J002E3 has a very large topocentric
> parallax. You'll need to enter your own observatory code,
> or a latitude and longitude, into HORIZONS to obtain accurate
> predictions for your location.
>
>
> Roger W. Sinnott
> Senior Editor
> Sky & Telescope
>
>
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