Congrats to you and all the others who won a Harvey Award last nite. And
what an incredible birthday gift for Geoff!!! After recognizing so many
others all these years for their contributions to the meteorite world, its
so nice to see him being rewarded for all he's given us......Very well
deserved.........now if we only knew what type of meteorite it would
produce! Congratulations Geoff!!!
Arlene Schlazer
----- Original Message -----
From: "Rob Matson" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Saturday, February 05, 2011 1:38 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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