Asteroid 2007 TU24 Close Approach Video

Asteroid 2007 TU24, discovered by the Catalina Sky Survey on October 11, 2007 has closely approached the Earth to within 1.4 lunar distances (334,000 miles) on 2008 Jan. 29 08:33 UT. We have observed this object from Remanzacco Observatory with a 45cm f/4.4 reflector and CCD FLI IMG 1001E. Below You can find our video composed of 100 images x 2 seconds showing this asteroid (magnitude 10) from 20h29m to 20h 45m UT.

2007 TU24 will be the closest currently known approach by a potentially hazardous asteroid of this size (between 150 and 600 meters in diameter) or larger until 2027.

Giovanni Sostero, Luca Donato ed Ernesto Guido

Comet C/2008 A1 (McNaught)

We imaged C/2008 A1 on 2008, Jan. 11.3 (details on image):

http://tinyurl.com/2u9z26


In out stacking is possible to appreciate a nice coma, nearly 30arcsec across, elongated toward North-East. The total magnitude(unfiltered CCD) is nearly 15, while the Afrho calculation (proxy ofthe dust abundance within the coma) provide a value close to 670 +/-50 cm (with a photometric profile very flat between 15,000 and 40,000Km from the central condensation).

This seems to indicate an activeobject, if we consider that currently this comet is nearly 4 AU fromthe Sun (inbound).The preliminary orbital elements, published by the Minor Planet Centerin M.P.E.C. 2008-A49, show that this comet will remain a mainlysouther object, with perihelion occuring in November 2008, and a total m1 considered to be nearly magn. 10 at its best.

Giovanni Sostero and Ernesto Guido

COMET P/2008 A2 LINEAR

IAUC nr. 8912, published yesterday, announces the discovery of a newperiodic comet, P/2008 A2 by means of the LINEAR survey.

Preliminary orbital elements from the Minor Planet Center, report a short periodJupiter-family orbit, with P= 5.7 years, perihelion occuring on 2008,June 12 (q= 1.3 AU):

http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/iau/Ephemerides/Comets/2008A2.html

This comet is supposed to remain an unremarkable object, since itsmaximum brightness will be close to m1= 17.4, around the time of itsperihelion.We imaged this object on 2008, Jan. 15.4 and 16.4, while it was in the NEO-CP (details on image):

http://tinyurl.com/27mfar

In our stackings we didn't found any convincing evidence of a cometaryfeatures, probably because the extremely tiny coma reported by onlyone observer (J. Young, Table Mountain 0-61m reflector + CCD: 4"-6"diameter) was well below our threshold limit

Ernesto Guido and Giovanni Sostero