http://astrosurf.com/aude/map/index_us.htm

MAP Alert #357, February 24, 2007


Reports from Ben Hudgen's, Gerard Faure, and more general MAP news 
highlight this late February "moon dogged"  MAP Alert.

First, make sure to update your address book to my lgasteroid@earthlink.net
thanks.

First Ben Hugdens writes of double good news.

<Last Saturday (2-17) was an eventful evening.   I was observing from a very dark sky site at Fort Griffin State Park north of Abilene, TX.     
 
I successfully observed and recorded the asteroid occultation event by 55 Pandora.  There was a two magnitude drop in the star's brightness and it lasted for 3.9 seconds.    By luck the predicted path was very close to the state park location.   This was my first successful recorded asteroid occultation in a long time, though I have tried several others over the past couple of years but all had been seen as very close misses. 
 
This same night I was able to observe nine other asteroids and as a result have finally reached that 2,000th logged minor planet.  1489 Attila was the lucky rock..    
 
Did you ever hear from anyone that also observed 26858 Misterrogers recently?>

Ben moves up the the A2K club, or 2000 asteroids observed! So, 2000 congrats
on your lifetime record. Plus an occultation, all letters should have such great news. 
But, we have no more sightings as of yet on 26858 Misterrogers.

Gerard Faure's first sightings of 2007

<The starry night was not predicted for the February 20, but finally the
perturbation had some delay, and the sky was yet without clouds. I 
offered to myself a break in the professional activity ;-)

My targets notably were the last new MAP objects yet observable and the 
two objects noted by Andrew : (5548) Siebold and (34077) 2001 RH


I observed 6 asteroids during this first part of the night of February 
20-21 :

 1884 Skip       v13.9        F/0.2       +/-0.1
 5448 Siebold    v14.4-v14.3  B/0.1-B/0.2 +/-0.1
 2167 Erin       v14.6-14.6   F/0.2       +/-0.1
 1806 Derice     v15.0        F/0.2 +/-0.2  close to a double star
34777 2001 RH    v16.0-v16.1  F/0.9-F/1.0 +/-0.2
 6724 1991 CX5   v16.3-v16.2  F/0.5-F/0.4 +/-0.2


(5448) Siebold noted by Andrew Salthouse seems not to reach the limit 
of the inclusion in the MAP, but it is effectively slightly brighter than
predicted

(34777) 2001 RH, indicated by Andrew, in a private message, was one my
goals since two months. Finally, I had the opportunity to observe it. 
It was effectively interesting, with about 1.0 mag fainter than 
predicted !
It is a new MAP Object !!!
Did you search it in the past, Andrew ?

(6724) 1991 CX5, found fainter than predicted by Roger Harvey in 
January 2007, was very limit with my C8, but I observed it at about 0.5 mag
fainter, as indicated by Roger !

In the vicinity of Skip, I found a curious bright star with my finder, 
not
present on my Falkauer chart. At home, I had the answer : it was S LMi, 
a M
type variable, at its maximum.


Cheers>


Gerard's addition to today's mailing Re: MAP Alert #357
(so this posts at the web site with this alert.) 

Hello Roger (Dymock) and hello to all,

I had no free time up to now, but I wished to complete the answers from
Lawrence on the questions from Roger.

At 12:51 18/02/2007 -0500, Lawrence Garrett wrote:
>   MAP Alert #357, February 18, 2007   Observations from Andrew Salthouse,
>questions from Roger Dymock, and much housekeeping news on my end highlight
>this post 1 meter snowfall MAP Alert....
>Roger Dymock submits good
>questions on the MAP program below :

>1. how does one join the project ?

by a message to Lawrence or myself
You are already a reader of the MAP Alerts


>2. where can I find a list of asteroids needing magnitude estimates
(visual and CCD)  ?
>3. where are estimates sent and is there a standard format ?


The magnitude measures are on the MAP Database loadable at the link on :

http://astrosurf.com/aude/map/index_us.htm


On this webpage there are other MAP files :

- The recapitulative list of the MAP Objects on December 31,2006

- The photometric list of asteroids on January 06,2007

- The monthly MAP Program. This list is just updated for March 2007; It
permits to have the list of MAP objects actually visible for the entire night.
I join it by a zipped html file to this mail

The most interesting MAP objects to follow are those with a high
discrepancy of magnitude or those already observed at two oppositions.
Nevertheless, for all the MAP objects which are not flagged by an "Mc",
it's interesting to measure them again to reach at least the minimum of
three oppositions and three observers, and a good averaged discrepancy of
magnitude.

The MAP Database and the Recapitulative list give these information.
The monthly MAP Program gives the chorological list of the MAP asteroids for
the observations of an entire night in the actual month

Mainly for the CCD observers, there is also a very interesting list of the
conjunctions between the MAP objects and the LONEOS stars at :

http://www.astrobgs.dyndns.org/astro/MAP/index.htm

The lists ( classified by chronological order or by asteroid number ) made
by Bernard Guillaud-Saumur permit to know the MAP asteroids which are near
one or more LONEOS stars for a specific night. It is possible then to image
the MAP asteroids and one or more LONEOS stars ( very good reference stars
) in the same images and to obtain better measures.

The standard format of the submitted measures is this located on the
individual lines of measures in the MAP Database.

Please, let give at least :
- The precise date and hour of Observation (five digits after the decimal
point for the hours)
- The observed magnitude
- The type of MAP measure ( the list is in the MAP Database )

Thank you for your interest on the MAP
It will be a pleasure to obtain new measures !

Cheers
Gerard>


Gerard's comments are a welcome addition to my brief reply in the last alert to the 
questions of Roger Dymock. With the amount of new information posted for 
our 10 years of observing, it became obvious a new addition to the MAP 
homepage would have to be created. First action was to get the old useful
pages saved back online under my new ISP, and then to go over all mailings and compose
the new section. And this should be added to a new observers package as well, 
bringing all data up to date. Gerard's excellent page http://astrosurf.com/aude/map/index_us.htm
will be added this weekend, and I will add other items as needed, a FAQ from our letters
would go well. 

And just what is the "moon dogged" alert about? I noticed these observations on today's
DOU
02212         C2007 02 23.40709 02 09 08.38 +36 13 57.5          14.1 V
02212         C2007 02 23.40932 02 09 07.93 +36 13 52.3          14.2 V
02212         C2007 02 23.41378 02 09 07.00 +36 13 41.5          14.2 V

This would place Hephaistos a magnitude brighter then predicted but moon dogged 
by a bright moon making this very hard to observe.  Dark of the moon target here.
call for observations of you might. A review of this object in the database of the MPO2003,
shows this a close approach around every 3 years or so.   

 
Lawrence Garrett
ALPO Minor Planet Section
Assistant Coordinator
lgasteroid@earthlink.net     revised mail address

AUDE WebPages
Gerard Faure (8297 gerardfaure)
http://www.astrosurf.com/map    revised URL