🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <C1CH8C.JwE@well.sf.ca.us>, metares@well.sf.ca.us 
(Tom Van Flandern) writes:

 > 
 >      The observations suggest that > 70% of all numbered asteroids are
 > binary (either contact binaries, or with current orbiting satellites).  But
 > the only observations that have sampled many asteroids yet are occultations
 > and radar ranging.  Radar often shows complex or bifurcated images, leaving
 > the interpretation ambiguous.  Results from occultations of stars are clear
 > and unambiguous, in my judgment as a long-time analyst of occultation data.

I have made my share of high-quality photoelectric observations of asteroid
occultations, and been directly involved with programs that made lots more.
I have never seen the slightest evidence of duplicity.  I have been within a
few meters of the same chord where someone reported a secondary event, and 
there wasn't a damn thing there.

Indeed, there could be lots of asteroidal satellites that go undetected, since
the amount of near-asteroid space that is actually probed by occultation
observations is quite small.  But that is NOT remotely the same thing as
saying that > 70% of all numbered asteroids are binary.  Lack of evidence is
not evidence of a lack; but neither is it evidence of an abundance!

 >      I think history will judge this as another case of denying good
 > observations that tend to disprove a popular theory.

Baloney.  There isn't any "popular theory" against binary asteroids.  To the
contrary, people like Alan Harris have worked out their dynamics and made
lists of candidate objects.  We would be DELIGHTED to find some, and I have 
a Space Telescope program to do just that.  But so far they seem extraordi-
narily hard to find. 

On a related matter:

 >> How well could Ostro's group detect or rule out satellites of Toutatis
 >> using their radars?

One of Ostro's group would have to comment on that, but remember they could 
only search a limited amount of bandwidth and delay space.  I can add that
the Space Telescope observations of Toutatis rule out any sizable satellites
within several hundred kilometers.  We will try to be more specific when we
publish those results.

Ben