[meteorite-list] Earth Trojan asteroids

[Sterling K. Webb]

Hi,

    Like old age, capture, at least orbital capture,
is better than the other most likely alternative,
they being, respectively, death and impact!

Sterling
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Francis Graham wrote:
<   Sterling and list, if it was real, it was a near
< miss closer than you realize. A near Earth asteroid
< passing in the direction of the Sun can be captured.
< Recall JE002E4, the temporary "extra moon" of Earth
< 2002-2004 that may have been a Saturn stage.
< Francis
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> Streling K. Webb wrote:
>  "During the 29 June 1878 solar eclipse, two
> experienced astronomers, Professor James
> Craig Watson, director of the Ann Arbor
> Observatory in Michigan, and Lewis Swift, an
> amateur from Rochester, New York, both claimed
> independently to have seen a "planetary"
> object close to the Sun at totality, about
> magnitude five or six.  These guys were not
> jerks nor incompetent.  Watson was the discoverer
> of 20 confirmed minor planets (a lot
> in those days) and Swift was the discoverer of a
> number of comets some of which you've
> probably heard of.  They knew what they we doing.
> Both saw a detectable disk, not a
> bright point.
>
>     Because their positions for the object differ
> from each other more than can be
> accounted for by the Earth distance between
> Wyoming and Colorado (where they
> respectively were), the half-degree parallax says
> to me that they observed a honking
> big asteroid in the inner system that was
> actually passing very close to the Earth and
> only incidentally in line with the Sun at the
> time of eclipse.  Its relative motion
> could account for some of the parallax, but
> eclipse totality observing time is very
> short, not long enough to observe relative
> motion.  Did we have a "near miss"?"
>