Great news for a Great man!
Jerry Flaherty
----- Original Message -----
From: "Rob Matson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Meteorite Central" <meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Tuesday, November 27, 2007 1:35 AM
Subject: [meteorite-list] Asteroid (149244) Kriegh
Hi All,
I'm happy to announce that last week the International Astronomical
Union's
Committee on Small Bodies Nomenclature approved my asteroid citation
honoring
Jim Kriegh:
149244 Kriegh
Discovered 2002 Sept. 14 by R. Matson on NEAT images taken at
Palomar.
"James D. Kriegh (1928-2007) was a civil engineering professor at the
University
of Arizona and the founding father of Oro Valley, Arizona. A discoverer of
many
meteorites, he is best known for his discovery of the 15,000-year-old Gold
Basin
meteorite strewn field in northwest Arizona."
JPL has already added "Kriegh" to its list of searchable asteroid names,
and you can view a 3D dynamical applet of Jim's namesake minor planet
using
the following link:
http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=kriegh;orb=1;cov=0;log=0#discovery
I thought the timing of the IAU's approval was nicely coincidental, given
that Jim discovered the first Gold Basin meteorite exactly 12 years ago
on November 24th, 1995.
Asteroid (149244) Kriegh is a member of the Flora family of inner main
belt
asteroids (S-type asteroids). Flora family members are the closest major
asteroid group to earth and are considered good candidates for being the
parent bodies of the L chondrites. This was in fact one of the reasons I
chose this particular asteroid to be named after Jim -- the Gold Basin
strewn field most likely traces its origin to a member of the Flora
family.
Based on a typical albedo for an S-type minor planet, Asteroid Kriegh is
about 1-km in diameter, which gives it a mass somewhere in the
neighborhood
of a 1.5 billion metric tons. That's a lot of Gold Basin meteorites!
Best wishes to Jim's family and friends,
Rob
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