Another Late Discovery 2021 PC

[bigmasterdrago]

Caught by the Zwicky Transit Facility on Palomar Mountain on Aug 2.2UT, this little rock whipped in from above and passed on the dark side 2/3 toward the moons orbit. Moving past my yard low in the west in morning light (07:42CDT) at >15'/min and possibly in the mid 12 magnitude range. Another discovery too late to make hay, although this rock was only bright in daylight, it's just so frustrating to get late updates. I seriously doubt that I could have tracked it due to it being so near to the earth/moon system - lots of gravs. It's difficult to quickly get these elements into the software and then the ephemeris may have large errors. Not able to check this one, but discovered and tracked by 5 observatories for nearly 22 hours as it swung by.

[PMSchu]

Hi BMD,

Yes, these speedy rocks are tough enough to catch without the aded difficulty of the slow updates to the MPC's database. 2021 OZ is still the last object in my MP DB that was updated for NEOs on 2021 Aug 2. I'm updating the DB now. We'll see if 2021 PC turns up now.

Phil S.

[bigmasterdrago]

Phil, you posted a few hours ago. Did it turn up? I had added the elements manually ~12 hours ago as they were not in the updates.

---

The little rock is currently *NOT* in the Lowell files, but was found in the MPC and JPL with elements positional differences of ~25". They agree with those from Horizons where I always getting elements for the NEA or fast movers. Fun stuff to roll out the Dob!

[PMSchu]

Hi BMD,

Yes, 2021 PC did show up in the MPC's NEOs at Today's Epoch download that I did yesterday. Unfortunately the close approach of 2021 PC occurred on Aug 2. Too late to be useful. Frustrating because it would have been bright enough to observe.

Phil S.