Cloudy and overcast here so I haven't been able to observe this asteroid-so far- well that's my story

has anyone yet?

it'd be good for some pics too!

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Damien,
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John Chumack send me a video he made of Toutatis. Here's his website, although, I'm not sure if he's posted it.

http://www.galacticimages.com/

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Nope, just checked and a search didnt pull up anything

Hi everyone, this information may be useful to you.

Asteroid 4179 Toutatis was discovered by C. Pollas on January 4, 1989, at Caussols, France, on photographic plates taken on the 0.9-m Schmidt telescope by Alain Maury and Derral Mulholland.

Toutatis's eccentric, four-year orbit extends from just inside the Earth's orbit to the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. The plane of Toutatis's orbit is closer to the plane of the Earth's orbit than any other known several-kilometre Earth-orbit-crossing asteroid. It is in a 3:1 mean-motion resonance with Jupiter that serves as a dynamical pathway from main-belt orbits to Earth-crossing orbits on time scales of a million years. Toutatis may have the most chaotic orbit studied to date, a consequence of the asteroid's frequent close approaches to Earth.

Ground based radar imagery indicate that Toutatis is in fact an elongated asteroid revolving around its common center of gravity causing its photometric magnitude to fluctuate over time. A radar image of the asteroid is shown here. Toutatis is now rapidly moving south in the sky until October, then will move north again. Its magnitude during October will be approximately +15.8.



Ephemeris for asteroid 4179 Toutatis
26 Sep 2004 RA 20h 51h 33.344s Dec -36 40 49.83 Mag 9.2
27 Sep 2004 RA 20h 16h 19.386s Dec -45 14 56.45 Mag 8.9
28 Sep 2004 RA 18h 38m 53.898s Dec -57 57 47.97 Mag 8.9
29 Sep 2004 RA 14h 25m 33.351s Dec -59 19 17.27 Mag 10.1
30 Sep 2004 RA 11h 58m 59.161s Dec -38 18 2.50 Mag 13.0
1 Oct 2004 RA 11h 11m 20.903s Dec -22 12 41.72 Mag 15.2

[Updated Sept.27]

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There's an animation of images of asteroid 4179 Toutatis at http://www.spaceweather.com/swpod2004/23se.../ericallen1.gif

Dave Mitsky

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Thank you David,

I noticed that at image 18 Toutatis appears to be occulted by a dark object --- quite interesting. On the NASA Space Weather .com site there is a similar animation and on this Toutatis does indeed appear to occult a field star, however, I did not check the date and time of the image.

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