August 26, 2007 at 8:05pm
On 16/08/2007 we tried to recover the comet P/1998 VS24 LINEAR, but found a new brilliant object (17.9m). The body was independently observed by Giovanni Sostero during the same night. The asteroid had a motion in the opposite direction to the surrounded objects and the possibility to be a new NEA was small (about 13%). We suspected that this could be a new comet, but the Giovanni’s observations rejected the hypothesis.
A second night observation was obtained and we sent the observations to MPC. After one day the object was linked to the asteroid 2007 OB2 observed only in two nights respectively by Catalina (18/07/2007) and LINEAR (18/06/2007) projects. However, at this time there were no orbit elements and the ephemeredes was incorrect. With help of our astrometry the orbit was calculated and other observations were linked.
The asteroid is a Mars-crosser and will reach maximum magnitude (17.0m) in October.
