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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 14, 1998

****IMAGES AND ANIMATION OF ASTEROIDS AVAILABLE AT
http://philos.phys.lsu.edu/****

BATON ROUGE -- Astronomers at Baton Rouge's Highland Road Park
Observatory recently discovered three asteroids--marking the
observatory's first major discovery since going online in April.

Two of the asteroids measure two to four miles in diameter and are
approximately 120 million miles away, while the third approaches the
orbit of Jupiter and may be as large as 15 miles in diameter.

The space rocks were discovered as astronomers with LSU, the Baton 
Rouge Recreation and Park Commission and the Baton Rouge Astronomical 
Society participate in international efforts to record and predict
orbits of
asteroids that might endanger Earth.

The job of cataloging asteroidal orbits is a huge undertaking. "There
are
40,000 known asteroids, and 9,000 have been given official number
designations, and another 30,000 have orbits that are not known well
enough to be given an official number designation," LSU Physics
Professor
Gregory Guzik said.

Hollywood has made several movies recently about asteroids colliding
with
Earth, and while Hollywood has stretched the truth and somewhat
distorted
reality, something like the summer movie "Armageddon" could happen but
not
any time soon, Walt Cooney of the Baton Rouge Astronomical Society
said.

"Our preliminary data indicate these three asteroids are not 
endangering Earth, and that is obviously good news. But discoveries
like these 
will help us to have a better understanding of our solar system,"
Cooney 
said.

But while the astronomers were looking to the heavens for asteroids,
Hurricane Georges' clouds were threatening to put a blanket of clouds
over
Baton Rouge, preventing the observatory's 20-inch telescope from
taking
more images of the asteroids.

"We found our first asteroid--1998 SG27--Thursday night (Sept. 24). 
And Saturday night, while we were trying to get our second round of 
tracking data on the astroid, we noticed two other asteroids. We were
really
excited by the discoveries, but the hurricane's clouds covered our 
view, so we went home. But at midnight I saw that the clouds were
breaking, so I
raced back to the observatory to gather more data on the other two
asteroids--1998 SK35 and 1998 SL35," Cooney said.

The International Astronomical Union Minor Planet Center at the
Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory at Harvard, which is the 
world-wide clearing house for mapping asteroids, requires two sets of
data. The
center requires data from at least two nights of observation, Guzik 
said.

"Once the hurricane came through, we had to depend on other 
astronomers in Houston, California and Australia to help us with the
second set of
data for the last two asteroids. This is a common practice among
astronomers; we often get calls from around the country and world to
help
verify coordinates of asteroids," Cooney said.

The astronomers look for asteroids with a digital camera attached to
the
telescope, taking pictures of certain areas of space. The images are
transferred to a computer, and then the process of looking for
asteroids
on a computer screen begins. To an untrained eye, the computer screen
looks black with white dots, but the trained eye sees it differently,
according to Guzik.

Asteroids are identified by connecting images taken over several 
hours. These digital  movie "loops" allow astronomers to separate
stars from
spots on the screen. And if a vague, unidentifiable white dot, barely
the
size of a pencil point, passes across the screen, astronomers begin
tracking the dot in the hopes that it is an unidentified asteroid,
Katrina
Wefel of BREC said.

"Spotting a dot millions of miles away that no one else can identify
is
very exciting. You can really feel the energy in a room when you have
a
handful of people at calculators and computers trying to figure out
what
we are seeing and all of us hoping that what we are seeing is an
unidentified asteroid, never seen before by humans," Cooney said.

Once the observatory's asteroid orbits were verified, the group sent
their findings to the center to be catalogued and numbered. From this
point on, the Baton Rouge group and other astronomers from around the
world will keep measuring the asteroids' orbits. After several years
of
observation, the group will be able to suggest names for asteroids,
Guzik
said.

While discovering asteroids isn't uncommon, this most recent discovery
is
important for Baton Rouge's observatory because it reinforces the dual
purpose of the telescope--research and community outreach.

"We have been having school children come out to the observatory on
Friday nights to peer into the night's sky for some time now. We are
thrilled with the number and quality of students who come here wanting
to
know more about the stars. And so with the Friday Night Campfire and
Saturday Science for Children we have met our community outreach
mission,
and now these discoveries validate our research mission, too," Wefel
said.

The observatory staff doesn't know when their next discovery will be,
but
with fall's cooler and drier air on the way and hurricane season
almost
over, they are excited about the possibilities.

-- 
Frederick J. Barnett                       http://www.eatel.net/~fred/
E-mail: fred@eatel.net
Governing Board Member, HTML Writers Guild         http://www.hwg.org/
The Baton Rouge Astronomical Society
http://www.eatel.net/~fred/bras/bras.html
The BREC, LSU, BRAS Highland Road Park Observatory
http://www.phys.lsu.edu/observatory/
"Someone's got to take the responsibility if the job's going to get
done!! Do you think that's easy?!?" Gregory Peck - The Guns Of
Navarone.