[meteorite-list] Freshly Painted Arecibo Observatory Returns To Work, Spies Asteroid 3200 Phaethon

[Ron Baalke]

http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/Dec07/Arecibo.phaethon.html

Chronicle Online e-News

Freshly painted Arecibo Observatory returns to work, spies object 
associated with meteor showers

http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/Dec07/Arecibo.phaethon.html

Dec. 21, 2007

By Lauren Gold
LG34 at cornell.edu

After receiving its first fresh, full coat of paint in more than 40 
years, Arecibo Observatory made its first observation in more than 
six months at 6:36 a.m., Saturday, Dec. 8.

The giant paint job was critical for ensuring the observatory's 
safety and structural integrity.

The telescope focused on the asteroid 3200 Phaethon, which travels 
closer to the sun than any other numbered asteroid -- about twice as 
close to the sun as the planet Mercury. Phaethon is the source of the 
Geminid meteor shower, which causes streams of shooting stars every 
December.

Jean-Luc Margot, Cornell assistant professor of astronomy, and Jon 
Giorgini of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, 
Calif., are studying Phaethon and other asteroids that have 
trajectories strongly affected by sunlight, sun shape and general 
relativity effects. Mike Nolan, an Arecibo staff scientist, conducted 
the Dec. 8 observation; Lance Benner of JPL leads the radar 
investigation of Phaethon.

Asteroid orbits are influenced by the absorption and re-emission of 
solar energy -- or the so-called Yarkovsky effect. These changes to 
the asteroidal motion will be quantified with the Arecibo radar 
measurements to understand the properties of near-Earth asteroids. 
This is one of dozens of projects now under way at the observatory.

The six-month painting project -- the first time the Arecibo platform 
and focal-point structure has received a thorough painting -- ended 
in November. Since then a skeletal crew of observatory staff worked 
around-the-clock to bring the 1,000-foot radio telescope and the 
planetary radar back to astronomical life.

Now the observatory is fully functional, with all motion, electronic, 
transmitting and receiving, and computing systems operating.

"It is ready to return to the task of carrying out the scientific 
observations for the many thousands of hours of approved research 
programs that will keep the telescope very busy for the next several 
years," said Robert Brown, director of the National Astronomy and 
Ionosphere Center, a national research center operated by Cornell 
under a cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation.

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