Asteroid 70401 (Davidbishop)
What is information about an asteroid doing on a supernova web page? The rewards of running a web page like this are few and far between, but it is very nice to be recognized occasionally. In this case, the recognition came from an old friend of this web page, Michael Schwarts, who runs Tenagra Observatories. Back in 1999, Paulo Holvorcem and Michael Schwarts using a remote controlled C14 discovered an unnamed asteroid. It was given the designation "1999 RH241" by the Minor Planet Center, and eventually the number "70401" when it was discovered to be a new object.
In 2008 another friend of these web pages Doug Rich wrote an article about me and my adventure with this page. Mike Schwarts read this article, and decided to name one of the asteroids he discovered after me. The name "Bishop" had already been used, so he picked "Davidbishop" as the name of the object. This is the data I recieved on this object:
The specifics of the asteroid are as follows:
(70401) 1999 RH241
Display all designations for this objectEpoch 2008 Nov. 30.0 TT = JDT 2454800.5 MPC M 184.17411 (2000.0) P Q n 0.24646357 Peri. 149.26750 -0.02692318 +0.99142924 T = 2455513.89505 JDT a 2.5194218 Node 118.91480 -0.94427750 +0.01674484 q = 2.0312351 e 0.1937694 Incl. 8.39790 -0.32804747 -0.12956723 P 4.00 H 15.1 G 0.15 U 1From 184 observations at 6 oppositions, 1998-2007, mean residual 0".55. Diameter estimated between 2 and 6 km Orbital period: 4.00 years
Basically, this is a rock in the asteroid belt, between the orbit of Mars and Jupiter (closer to the inside, or Mars side).
Alessandro Dimai (an amateur astronomer in Spain who has sent several images to my supernova page) found an asteroid on a DSS plate from 1950 (1950 04 22 675). When he tracked it forwards the only asteroid which came close with 70401 DavidBishop. Since he knew me he e-mailed me about it. I had him enter the data into the Minor planet center.
It turns out that on Feb. 2, 1982 little 70401 passed about 400,000 km (~ distance between the earth and the moon) from asteroid 2 Pallas. The 2 Km DavidBishop was no match for the 544 Km wide Pallas, and it changed it's orbit slightly. This data is being used to try to figure out the mass of Pallas.
To find the current location, go to the Minor Planet Ephemeris Service and type in "DavidBishop" in the search box. Also see Asteroid DavidBishop current data