Asteroid – Crayford Manor House Astronomical Society Dartford

Occultation of Asteroid 2000 SZ278

29th January 2024

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Observation of an occultation by Asteroid 2000 SZ278 using an eVscope by Mike Rushton.

Mike has just started analysing these himself rather than sending them off to California for a bot to do the work.

Asteroid 2000 SZ278 which is a Main Belt member and only 1.2km in diameter passed in front of a 13th Mag star. The shadow crossed Kent and blocked the stars light for 2.2 secs.

You can clearly see this in the light curve (The time series data are 0.3 secs apart.)

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="704"] 2000-SZ278OCCULTATION-20240126

Occultation by Asteroid 2000 SZ278 on 2024-01-26[/caption]

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Asteroid 2023 CX1 caught by CMHASD meteor camera on Monday 13th February 2023

17th February 2023

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Updated: 19th February 2023

Exciting news!!!!!! An asteroid that had only been discovered in space a few hours before impacting the Earth has been caught by the Crayford (CMHASD) meteor camera on Monday 13^th February 2023 at 2.59am.

It is only the seventh time an asteroid strike had been successfully forecast, in what the European Space Agency said was 'a sign of the rapid advancements in global asteroid detection capabilities'.

Despite all the cloud that was around at the time; our meteor camera managed to capture the small 1 meter asteroid now called 2023 CX₁ as it entered the Earth’s atmosphere creating a brilliant fireball as it disintegrated, lighting up the night sky over the English Channel as it travelled eastward over the coast of Normandy, France. The 3ft meteoroid created an 'airburst' that could be seen across southern England and Wales and in parts of northern France as far south as Paris.

Below is the CMHASD meteor camera video showing the fireball.

[playlist type="video" ids="7557"]

The one-metre asteroid was discovered by Krisztián Sárneczky with the 60-cm Schmidt telescope of the Piszkéstető Observatory in Hungary. It is his second discovery of an impactor,

‘’The fireball event happened at the predicted time (02:59 UTC) and location, with observations mostly from Southern UK and France, but also from Belgium, the Netherlands and even Germany. It is likely that some fragments of the meteoroid may have survived the atmospheric pass and fell somewhere onshore close to the coast north of Rouen, in Normandy, France’’ ref: https://neo.ssa.esa.int/-/new-imminent-impactor-found-by-european-astronomer

Now a space rock (meteorite) from that fireball has been found in northern France and CMHASD are absolutely thrilled. On 15 February 2023 art student Loïs Leblanc found the first meteorite of 2023 CX₁ in a field located in Saint-Pierre-le-Viger.

Update on Asteroid 2023 CX1 aka SAR2667 - YouTube

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_CX1

More news still to follow - so do check back.

Discovery of Asteroid 1997 WQ28 by Crayford Member

5th August 1997

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On the evening of 30th November 1997 we were obtaining CCD frames for the UKNova/ Supernova patrol using a 10"LX200, operating at f3.3 and StarlightXpress. At 21.30UT we imaged a suspect object near ngc765, a type SBb/Sc, 14th mag spiral galaxy in Aries. Estimating the magnitude at brighter than 16 we initially thought we might have discovered a second supernova as this was rather bright for a new asteroid and no known asteroid was in the region of the galaxy. We used the Sky v4 to control the LX200 and always load the 34000 minor planets before we start patrolling so are forewarned of any asteroid in the field. We also checked Megastar and the new service to check supernova suspects for minor planets at the Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams Web site:

A second image 25 minutes later clearly showed movement, ruling out a supernova. Ignoring our chagrin we took a final image at 22.28UT, measured the positions using astrometrica, a commercial astrometry software package and sent a report to Martin Mobberley, deputising for Guy Hurst who was away on business.

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[caption id="attachment_1671" align="aligncenter" width="184"] Asteroid 1997 WQ28 discovery image by Mark Armstrong[/caption]

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[caption id="attachment_1672" align="aligncenter" width="178"] Asteroid 1997 WQ28 Follow-up image by Stephen Laurie[/caption]

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The skies remained cloudy until on 3rd December we imaged six overlapping fields twice, approximately one hour apart to try and recover the suspect. At this stage we had to estimate where we thought the suspect should be as we don't have the software to calculate a rough ephemeris from initial observations. We picked up only one object showing movement and not appearing in the `Real Sky` field but were doubtful that it was the suspect as it appeared at least 0.5 magnitude fainter and CCD images taken near the ecliptic can often reveal faint asteroids. However we measured the new positions and reported to Guy Hurst.

Meanwhile on 2/3 December Stephen Laurie, having seen our original report but unable to respond immediately due to business, imaged an object in the approximate position. Using Computer-Aided Astrometry, another commercial software package, he imputed all the measured positions to date and concluded that they were all the same object!
Guy reported the observations to the Minor Planet Centre on 6th December and the asteroid received the official designation 1997 WQ28. We have now secured 28 observations over a 55 day arc and the object has still not been linked to a previously designated object. Our previous `discovery` 1997 DV was linked to 1990 QN5, discovered at Palomar!

Article originally by Mark Armstrong

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