Hello all, First, as I'm new to this list, a brief intro: I'm almost entirely involved with tracking of natural objects (asteroids, comets, planetary satellites) rather than of artificial objects. But every now and then, the folks who find those objects find something that moves in a vaguely asteroid-like manner (i.e., pretty slowly). Such objects are usually things with really high orbits, often with high eccentricity (so that they move slowly at apogee). For example, IMP-8, an object about halfway out to the moon with a twelve-day orbital period, routinely gets observed and mistaken for a satellite. Most of these get observed for a bit and then somebody figures out what they are, and then we all go back to looking for asteroids. But today, four observatories in New Mexico and Arizona tracked a "mystery object" with an orbital period of about 31 days. Then some observers with a telescope in Spain got some more data on it, so the orbit is firmed up a little. It has received a temporary name of 9U01FF6. Here's the data on it: http://www.projectpluto.com/mpec.htm This is sort of a standard format for asteroid data: you get the observations (times, RA/dec, magnitude, a three-character observatory code) followed by orbital elements and ephemerides. I've also included a set of TLEs. (Be warned that some software will probably choke at the idea of a TLE for an object with a 31-day period with e=.8.) Anyway. I've signed up to this list and am making this post because I've no clue as to what this thing might be. Any suggestions? Thanks! -- Bill ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Oct 26 2009 - 22:05:03 UTC