Asteroids, current and future
Bill J Gray Apr 11, 2002
Ben, about 2000 YE44: there are a couple of problems here. One is
that the orbits in MPCORB and ASTORB both had to make assumptions
about the eccentricity of the orbit, but they didn't make the same
assumptions. (Not that it matters very much. The uncertainty in
the orbit is so great that it could be just about anywhere, which is
why MPC says "leave for survey recovery" and the ASTORB data
gives a "current ephemeris uncertainty" of 1.1E+05 arcseconds,
or about 30 degrees... an uncertainty which is surely larger by now.)
The other problem is that ASTORB gave this guy an absolute
magnitude about 14.3 mags brighter than MPC does. Use the ASTORB
value, and 2000 YE44 is among the dozen biggest asteroids in the
solar system. (A few other asteroids were also given bogus values.)
Roger, about the 2880 return of 1950 DA: I do expect to post software
to integrate orbits. I doubt it will do a great job with this guy, since I
doubt that some of the smaller effects (perturbations from normally
negligible asteroids, the Yarkovsky effect, etc.) will be included in my
program. (The software is written, but is user-abusive at present.
No way I'm gonna post it in its current form.)
-- Bill