[meteorite-list] Happy Birthday, Meteorite Men!

From: Walter Branch <waltbranch_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Sat, 5 Feb 2011 16:52:02 -0500
Message-ID: <009701cbc57e$ef678080$0402a8c0_at_Desktop>

>Congratulations, Geoff, and welcome to the minor
> planet club!

Yes, indeed. Congratulations. Thats pretty cool.

A very exclusive club

-Walter



----- Original Message -----
From: "Rob Matson" <mojave_meteorites at cox.net>
To: <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Saturday, February 05, 2011 4:38 PM
Subject: [meteorite-list] Happy Birthday, Meteorite Men!


> Hi All,
>
> First off, happy birthday greetings to Geoff and Steve -- I hope
> you both had a fabulous time at your Birthday Bash last night at
> the Sky Bar, and that your bar tabs were covered by everyone
> else. ;-) I really wish I could have made it to Tucson again
> this year, but it's been crunch-time at work getting our ground
> software operational for our satellite launch in less than six
> months. I owe you both a belated birthday cocktail the next time
> our paths cross (hopefully in some farflung strewn field!)
>
> I got an e-mail from Bob Verish this morning, informing me that
> I won a Harvey Award last night!! I am honored and humbled and
> (as I wrote Geoff privately a little while ago) simultaneously
> a bit horrified that I couldn't be there in person last night
> to accept it. It would have been a special treat to share the
> stage with NEO-hunter-extraordinaire, Richard Kowalski, who I
> understand also won a Harvey.
>
> As long as I'm on the subject of asteroids, I'd like to share
> with the List a little early birthday gift that I presented
> Geoff late last year, but decided to wait until his birthday
> to announce publically:
>
> MPC 72991 citation:
>
> (132904) Notkin = 2002 RB237
> Geoffrey Notkin (b. 1961) is co-host of the popular Science Channel
> series Meteorite Men and author of over 100 articles on meteoritics,
> paleontology and the arts. A discoverer of meteorites on four continents,
> he has also made documentaries for Discovery, National Geographic, PBS,
> the
> BBC and the History Channel.
>
> - - - - -
>
> Minor planet dynamical group: Hilda
> Semi-major axis: 3.9982764 a.u.
> Inclination: 3.55428 degrees
> Eccentricity: 0.1440889
> Perihelion distance: 3.422169 a.u.
> Aphelion distance: 4.574384 a.u.
> Absolute magnitude: 14.4
>
> Astrometry from 89 observations at 6 oppositions spanning 1995-2010
> Last observed: 10/9/2010 by station G96
> Discovery date : 2002 09 12
> Discovery site : Palomar
> Discoverer : Matson, R.
>
> The Hildas are interesting in that they are in a 2:3 orbital resonance
> with Jupiter: they complete three orbits for every two Jovian orbits.
> The first Hilda asteroid was discovered in 1875. Currently there are
> only ~1100 Hildas known, which is less than 1/4 of a percent of all
> known asteroids. They are very dark objects, with a mean albedo of
> only 0.044 -- similar to cometary nuclei. Based on this albedo and
> an absolute magnitude of 14.4, (132904) has an approximate size of
> 8.4 km. That's a cross-sectional area very close to the size of
> Manhattan, with which Geoff should be quite familiar. :-) Assuming
> a bulk density of 1.5 g/cm^3, that corresponds to a mass of around
> 4.6 x 10^11 metric tons -- around a half trillion metric tons!
>
> Congratulations, Geoff, and welcome to the minor planet club!
>
> Best wishes,
> Rob
>
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Received on Sat 05 Feb 2011 04:52:02 PM PST