NEWSFLASH:Dave McDonald discovers Asteroid 2008TM9

Fabulous news and great work Dave!

Clear skies,

Paul.

Congratulations to Dave on his great piece of work.
Does this mean he has to give the other one back?

WooHoo - major party and free beers at Dave's place tonight!!!! :woohoo: :woohoo: :woohoo:

This is fantastic news! Stonking, Serious, Mega congrats to Dave McD!!!! It just shows that there really is still stuff out there for us to discover, even in these days of professional photon mega-hoovers!

What's doubly amazing is that Dave G was only just pipped to the post by LINEAR on another *two* asteroids!!!! How amazing is that????? :laugh:

Well, well done to both Daves!!

Phil.

Just heard that Dave will be on both the 6 O'Clock and 9 O'Clock news on RTE, The Dave Fanning show on RTE Radio One on Monday night. The Irish Independant are doing a spread, possible the Irish Times too, in fact there is interest from all the daily newspapers. As they say in the Carlsberg ad, "THIS. Is gonna be great!"

Just back from the Science gallery in Trinity College where a press conference was held. RTE were there and Dave gave an excellent interview for TV, it will be shown this evening as Dave G said, so stay tuned to RTE. Leo Enright and David Moore were also present and gave interviews.

I only knew Dave through e-mail but it was an honour indeed at last to meet with Dave and congratulate him in person. A well deserved mention at the conference by Leo was Eamonn Ansbro’s Kingsland Observatory and the excellent work taking place there and it’s initiatives in the feasibility studies in accessing telescopes from schools for education and learning purposes. Leo and Dave emphasised the fact that we need to get more young people involved in science and astronomy and as we know astronomy is an excellent means to do just that and it just goes to show that a person that has a day job and other commitments can use excellent off the shelf astronomical equipment in their space time and can make important discoveries and do useful science, I think that so called backyard astronomy is very much alive and well in Ireland and Dave McDonald has proven just that in spectacular fashion.

Clear skies
Mike

Just out of the press conference in TCD. It ran for an hour & a half, hosted by Leo Enright.

I also have to say congrats to Dave for the great achievment that it is.

It was great to lay witness to this great event being recoreded into the history books, or nespapers initially :laugh:
Hopefully with the extra observatories which now exist & which got a mention by name today, we won't have to wait a further 160 years

But we also can not forget Fíona who kept the wheels well oiled with the many cups of tea.

Paul.