[meteorite-list] Minor planet (149243) Dorothynorton
From: Matson, Robert D. <ROBERT.D.MATSON_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2010 14:17:10 -0800 Message-ID: <9180F6B27399C541B10663E21C8BDE92AF71DB_at_0461-its-exmb09.us.saic.com> Hi All, A little good news to share with the list on a Friday afternoon: The following citation is from MPC 71351 (149243) Dorothynorton = 2002 RL239 Dorothy S. Norton (b. 1945) is a scientific illustrator specializing in astronomy, geology and paleontology. Her illustrations have appeared in the National Geographic magazine, the popular meteorite book Rocks from Space and Ice Age Mammals of North America. - - - - - I thought I sent a message about Dorothy's namesake to the List a few months ago when her citation became official, but it apparently never appeared. As I wrote Dorothy back in July, it is a member of Main Belt I, and has a size somewhere between 1.2 and 2.2 km (the uncertainty driven by the range of possible reflectivities). If the asteroid were spherical (which of course, it isn't), it would have a volume in the range of 0.9-5.5 billion cubic meters. For fun, if you assume an ordinary chondrite bulk density of ~3.1 g/cm^3, that's a mass somewhere in the range of 2.8 to 17 billion metric tons. (That's quite a lot of meteorites!) To see what the orbit of Dorothy's asteroid looks like in 3D, use the following link: http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=149243;orb=1;cov=0;log=0;cad=0#orb (It takes a little while for the Java script to load.) The next close approach to earth will be in late January 2011, at a distance of about 1.08 a.u., which will be its closest approach since 2004. Cheers! Rob Received on Fri 03 Dec 2010 05:17:10 PM PST |
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