PLEASE NOTE:
*
CCNet, 1 September 1999
-----------------------
POEM OF THE DAY
ON THE 60th ANNIVERSARY OF THE START OF WORLD WAR II
DEATH FUGUE
by Paul Celan
Black milk of morning we drink it at night-time
we drink it at noon-time and morning we drink it at
midnight
we're drinking and drinking
we're digging a grave in the heavens no narrow beds there
A man has his house he plays with the serpents he writes
he writes at the closing of day to the Germans your golden
hair Margaret
he writes it and circles the house and the stars they are
shining he whistles the dogs to his side
he whistles his Jews on and onward gets us a grave in the
earth dug
he commands us to play the last dance
Black milk of morning we drink you at night
we drink you at morning and noon-time we drink you at
night-time we're drinking and drinking
A man has his house he plays with the serpents he writes
he writes at the closing of day to the Germans you golden
hair Margaret
And ashen your hair Sulamith we're digging a grave in the
heavens no narrow beds there
He screams dig deep in the earth you others burst into song
he grabs for the club at his belt and swings it his eyes
are blue
you with the shovels dig deeper you others play on for the
dance
Black milk of morning we drink you at night
we drink you at noon-time and morning we drink you at
night-time
we're drinking and drinking
A man has his house your golden hair Margaret
and ashen your hair Sulamith he plays with the serpents
He screams play sweet Death and Death is a Meister aus
Deutschland
he screams scrape that fiddle more darkly then you'll rise
as smoke in the air
then you'll have a grave in the clouds no narrow beds there
Black milk or morning we drink you at night
we drink you at noon-time and Death is a Meister aus
Deutschland
we drink you at noon-time and morning we're drinking and
drinking
and Death is a Meister aus Deutschland his eyes are blue
his lead bullets strike you his aim is true
a man has his house your golden hair Margaret
he unleases his dogs and makes us a present of graves in
the sky
he plays with the serpents and dreams that Death is a
Meister aus Deutschland
your golden hair Margaret
and ashen your hair Sulamith
(translated by Kyle Fischer)
(1) AMERICAN FOUNDATION FINANCES GLOBAL ASTEROID SEARCH
Richard Godwin <GRSG@aol.com>
(2) SMALL ASTEROID ENCOUNTER LIST
Mario Carpino <carpino@brera.mi.astro.it>
(3) SPACEGUARD IN AUSTRALIA
Michael Paine <mpaine@tpgi.com.au>
(4) STELLAR SMALL FRY, OR WAYWARD PLANET
Andrew Yee <ayee@nova.astro.utoronto.ca>
(5) REMOTE SENSING ANALYSIS OF ASTEROIDS
J.L. Hinrichs et al., UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII
(6) LARGE METEOROIDS IN THE LYRID STREAM
M. Beech & S. Nikolova, UNIVERSITY OF
REGINA
(7) INTERNAL STRUCTURES AND DENSITIES OF ASTEROIDS
L. Wilson et al., UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII MANOA
================
(1) AMERICAN FOUNDATION FINANCES GLOBAL ASTEROID SEARCH
From Richard Godwin <GRSG@aol.com>
For: Space Frontier Foundation, 16 First Ave., Nyack NY 10960
Media Contact: Richard Godwin 630 637 6296
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
AMERICAN FOUNDATION FINANCES GLOBAL ASTEROID SEARCH
Los Angeles, CA, August 31, 1999 -- The Space Frontier Foundation
today
announced the donation of its first international financial
grants to
astronomers involved in the search for Earth-orbit-crossing
asteroids.
The first grant will be made to Professor Vladimir Shkodrov and
Dr.
Violeta Ivanova of the Institute of Astronomy of the Bulgarian
Academy
of Sciences. The second grant will be made to Dr. Petr Pravec of
the
Astronomical Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences.
"It is becoming apparent that what was once ridiculed as
being far
fetched, an asteroid impacting the Earth, in actuality may have
seriously impacted civilizations during the last few
millennia," said
Richard Godwin, Executive Director of The Watch, a project of the
Space
Frontier Foundation. "We established this project to raise
funds for
asteroid detection because a large impact would produce
devastating
consequences for the human race if it happened now."
Asteroid observations are currently being performed by projects
such as
the U.S. Air Force's LINEAR program, SpaceWatch, Spaceguard and
the
NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory's NEAT program. However, the
entire
space around the Earth cannot be viewed from the United States
alone,
so The Watch is helping to bring other observatories to the
search.
"These other countries do not have the funding to obtain the
latest
equipment for discovering and tracking asteroids, but we want to
ensure
that this work gets completed as soon as possible,"
continued Godwin.
"That means helping these very capable astronomers to do
their work and
report back their findings. This is a more serious global
issue than the
public has been lead to believe."
The grant recipients were agreed upon by The Watch Council, which
includes some of the most notable names in asteroid research: Dr.
Richard Binzel of MIT, Dr. Tom Gehrels of University of Arizona,
Dr.
Eleanor "Glo" Helin of NASA/JPL, Dr. John Lewis of
University of
Arizona, and Dr. Brian Marsden of The Minor Planet Center at
Harvard.
The Watch Council will meet and be available for interviews
during the
annual conference of The Space Frontier Foundation in Los Angeles
on
September 23-26, 1999. Dr. Alan Hale, of Comet Hale-Bopp
fame, will
open the conference. For more details visit the Foundation's web
site
at www.space-frontier.org/EVENTS/SFC8.
For press credentials send email
to press@space-frontier.org.
The Space Frontier Foundation is an organization of people
dedicated to
opening the Space Frontier to human settlement as rapidly as
possible.
Our goals include protecting the Earth's fragile biosphere and
creating
a freer and more prosperous life for each generation by using the
unlimited energy and material resources of space. Our purpose is
to
unleash the power of free enterprise and lead a united humanity
permanently into the Solar System.
===================
(2) SMALL ASTEROID ENCOUNTER LIST
From Mario Carpino <carpino@brera.mi.astro.it>
A new list of objects with possible close encounters with our
planet
has been added to the homepage of Sormano Astronomical
Observatory.
This page includes only small (H>22) asteroids having an
Earth-MOID
distance lower than 0.014 AU. Usually only the circumstances of
the
encounter closer in time to the epoch of discovery are given;
however,
if the observation timespan is longer than 61 d (up to now, there
is
only one such case) we perform a numerical integration and
compute
close approaches over a period of three centuries (from -100 y to
+200
y from present).
The list is available at
http://www.brera.mi.astro.it/sormano/sael.html
and is a complement to the recently modified Minor Body Priority
List,
including larger (H=<22) objects and available at:
http://www.brera.mi.astro.it/sormano/mbpl.html
Both pages are updated weekly.
Best regards
Francesco Manca and Piero Sicoli
Sormano Astronomical Observatory
Localita' Colma del Piano
I-22030 Sormano (Co) - Italy
E-mail: sormano@tin.it
WWW: http://www.brera.mi.astro.it/sormano
====================
(3) SPACEGUARD IN AUSTRALIA
From Michael Paine <mpaine@tpgi.com.au>
Dear Benny,
On 31 August 1999 the Australian ABC current affairs program
Lateline
covered the lack of a professional NEO search in the Southern
Hemisphere. The program featured a link-up interview with Louis
Friedman from The Planetary Society, Paul Chodas from NASA and
Duncan
Steel from the UK. Understandably, the program was highly
critical of
the decision, in 1996, by the Australian government to stop
funding the
Spaceguard program in Australia. Incidentally, the cost of that
program
was around AU$120,000 per year, not $600,000, which is my
estimate for
an upgraded search program.
A government representative made a woeful effort to justify the
1996
decision and has obviously been very poorly informed about: the
risk of
an impact, the consequences of an impact, the cost of a
reasonable
search effort in Australia and the feasibility of mitigating an
impact,
provided that sufficient warning time is available. As Ducan
Steel
pointed out, if we don't look for these objects then we will have
zero
warning time.
Interestingly Louis Friedman favoured the approach that
scientists
should promote the scientific/resource potential of NEOs rather
than
the dire consequences of an impact. A transcript of the program
should
soon be available from the Lateline website
http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/.
By coincidence, after Lateline the ABC
screened a science discussion program "Life,the Universe and
Everything" hosted by Paul Davies. It was recorded in
Adelaide in July
and also featured Duncan Steel, who again made the point about a
lack
of a professional NEO search in Australia. Tomorrow night the
excellent
program The Planets will look at the possibility of microbes
transferring between Mars and Earth via meteoroids.
Episode Seven: Life, Wednesday September 1, 8.30 pm
"Is life on Earth a solitary and
miraculous event, or a
natural consequence of planet building?
Life may have
gained its first foothold on Mars and
been seeded on Earth
by a meteorite. We may be descended from
Martians."
http://www.abc.net.au/planets/
regards
Michael Paine
The Planetary Society Australian Volunteers
====================
(4) STELLAR SMALL FRY, OR WAYWARD PLANET
From Andrew Yee <ayee@nova.astro.utoronto.ca>
INSCiGHT
[http://www.academicpress.com/inscight/08311999/grapha.htm]
Tuesday, 31 August 1999, 5 pm PST
Stellar Small Fry, or Wayward Planet?
By Govert Schilling
Astronomers have spotted a mysterious dark object the size of
over a
dozen Jupiters. Perhaps too light to be a brown dwarf, the
smallest
kind of star, the object could be a giant planet drifting alone
through
space. Many similar bodies could lurk in nearby space, say the
astronomers, whose paper has been accepted by Astrophysical
Journal
Letters.
Maria Zapatero Osorio of the Canaries' Institute of Astrophysics
in La
Laguna, Tenerife, and her colleagues found the object, dubbed S
Ori 47,
when they were observing a young star cluster in the
constellation
Orion. The stars, 1100 light-years away, all formed just a few
million
years ago, so S Ori 47 is still glowing with the heat generated
when it
was formed. The team measured its luminosity (0.2% of that of the
sun)
and surface temperature (some 1700 degrees Celsius); by plugging
these
measurements into theoretical models of how quickly objects of
different masses should cool and fade after their formation, they
concluded it could be anything from 10 to 20 Jupiter masses. That
puts
S Ori 47 in the gray zone; objects less than 13 Jupiter masses
are
thought to be incapable of nuclear fusion, and are considered a
planet;
above that, they can be brown dwarfs.
Regardless of its true nature, S Ori 47 appears to be no
astronomical
oddity. "Currently, we're observing much fainter candidates
in the same
cluster," says Zapatero Osorio. Because all cluster members
are roughly
the same age, the fainter ones are probably even less massive. If
the
cluster is typical for the galaxy at large, space must be heavily
populated with such objects.
"It's a very important discovery," says Kevin Luhman of
the
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, who himself is hot on the trail of extremely
low-mass
objects in another cluster. But he doubts that the objects are
plentiful enough to account for the galaxy's "dark
matter," the
mysterious missing mass that seems to pull on the visible stars
and
gas.
© 1999 The American Association for the Advancement of Science
[Extracted from INSCiGHT, Academic Press.]
===============
(5) REMOTE SENSING ANALYSIS OF ASTEROIDS
J.L. Hinrichs*), P.G. Lucey, M.S. Robinson, A. Meibom, A.N. Krot:
Implications of temperature-dependent near-IR spectral properties
of
common minerals and meteorites for remote sensing of asteroids.
GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, 1999, Vol.26, No.12, pp.1661-1664
*) UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII,HAWAII INST GEOPHYS & PLANETOL,2525
CORREA
RD,HONOLULU,HI,96822
Remote sensing analysis of common mafic silicates on bodies like
asteroid 433 Eros may be in error unless temperature effects are
considered. In this paper, spectral sensitivity to temperature as
a
function of wavelength from 0.4 to 2.5 microns is quantified
using new
measurements of reflectance spectra of olivine and two ordinary
chondrites. The new data were obtained at higher temperature
resolution
and with greater accuracy than previous measurements. We use a
simple
thermal model to show that the temperature difference between
terrestrial ambient conditions and those prevailing on main belt
asteroids, as well as the temperature variations expected on the
surfaces of individual asteroids during observations by
spacecraft, are
large enough to cause easily detectable spectral differences.
Therefore, interpretations of asteroid spectra using spectra of
minerals and meteorites obtained at terrestrial ambient
conditions are
suspect. Copyright 1999, Institute for Scientific Information
Inc.
=============
(6) LARGE METEOROIDS IN THE LYRID STREAM
M. Beech*) & S. Nikolova: Large meteoroids in the Lyrid
stream. MONTHLY
NOTICES OF THE ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY, 1999, Vol.305, No.2,
pp.253-258
*) UNIVERSITY OF REGINA,CAMPION COLL,REGINA,SK S4S 0A2,CANADA
The outburst of the Lyrid meteor shower in 1803 was remarkable
for
being rich in bright fireballs and the generation of
electrophonic
sounds. The implications implicit to the detection of
electrophonic
sounds are studied in this paper. We present estimates for the
minimum-sized Lyrid meteoroid capable of generating electrophonic
sounds, and compare these lower limits with the largest meteoroid
that
might reasonably be ejected from a cometary nucleus through
coupling
with the sublimation gas outflow. A difference of a factor of
order 30
is found between the two limiting sizes. A minimum diameter of
order Im
is required for a Lyrid meteoroid to satisfy the conditions
necessary
for generating electrophonic sounds. The mechanisms responsible
for the
placement of large, metre-sized meteoroids into the Lyrid stream
are
not well defined, but they possibly relate to surface ageing
effects of
the parent comet, Comet C/1861 G1 Thatcher, and to a history of
nuclear
fragmentation. Copyright 1999, Institute for Scientific
Information
Inc.
==============
(7) INTERNAL STRUCTURES AND DENSITIES OF ASTEROIDS
L. Wilson*), K. Keil, S.J. Love: The internal structures and
densities
of asteroids. METEORITICS & PLANETARY SCIENCE, 1999, Vol.34,
No.3,
pp.479-483
*) UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII MANOA,HAWAII INST GEOPHYS & PLANETOL,
HONOLULU,HI,96822
Four asteroidal bodies (the Martian satellites Phobos and Deimos
and
the main-belt asteroids 243 Ida and 253 Mathilde) have now been
the
subjects of sufficiently close encounters by spacecraft that the
masses
and sizes and, hence, the densities of these bodies can be
estimated to
similar to 10%. All of these asteroids are significantly less
dense
than most members of the classes of meteorites identified as
being
compositionally most nearly similar to them on the basis of
spectral
characteristics. We show that two processes can act,
independently or
in concert, during the evolutionary histories of asteroids to
produce a
low bulk density. One of these processes is the result of one or
more
impact events and can affect any asteroid type, whereas the other
can
occur only for certain types of small asteroids that have
undergone
aqueous alteration. Copyright 1999, Institute for Scientific
Information Inc.
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