This continues to be a fascinating story. So many letters! I don't feel as though I can post them all without permission, but I can tell you that the majority think that this cannot be Mars. At this time I have no confirmation as to what it is. Many theories are relating to this object as being a ship, and as we approach the millennium it isn't so hard to imagine that we could be visited by others beings. I think it would be the ultimate for our liftime to be introduced to new beings, but that depends on what effect they would have on us and our precious planet, Earth.

These photos from LASCO that have the new found comet on May 3, 1988, S. Stezelberger did not inform the public that it existed. According to The Millennium Group this comet may prove to be dangerous. I am not predicting Deep Impact here, but TMG states that it has a lot of debris.

The above picture is ......we think is Comet Stezelberger. Then this morning my partner in research who runs the ORBIT Magazine had me take a look at the photo dated May 14. On the MPEG file these masses come flying into the screen! What is this? Kent and I thought it may possibly be part of the comet breaking up. The TMG says the comet has a lot of debris.

NASA Asks Delay of Asteroid Reports

.c The Associated Press

LOS ANGELES (AP) - If professional stargazers catch sight of an asteroid that might be on a crash course for Earth, the government wants them to keep it quiet about it - for at least 72 hours.

The new procedures aim to avoid panic from mistaken reports of doomsday, like the flurry of worry in March when astronomers reported asteroid 1997XF11 could collide with Earth in 2028. That was soon found to be erroneous.

Astronomers whose work is funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration have agreed for now to keep asteroid and comet discoveries to themselves for 48 hours while more detailed calculations are made, the Los Angeles Times reported today.

The findings would then go to NASA, which would wait another 24 hours before going public.

The new interim procedures are not an attempt to hide anything but to make sure the information is accurate, said scientist Donald Yeomans of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, whose calculations helped dispel the fear asteroid 1997XF11 was headed straight for Earth.

``It is an attempt for the small scientific community that tracks these objects to build a consensus, to determine if an asteroid is a threat,'' he said.

Some scientists question the new push from NASA, saying quick action from astronomers is needed to determine an asteroid's danger.

``I don't think one should be secret about these things,'' said Brian G. Marsden, the director of the International Astronomical Union who made the announcement about 1997XF11's close pass to Earth. ``I think the public would be unhappy.''

NASA officials were ``very upset'' that they first heard of the 1997XF11 threat from reporters. ``Almost all of us found out by press release,'' Yeomans said. ``Clearly that is not the way it should work.''

The first reports estimated it would pass within 30,000 miles of the Earth's center and could possibly collide. That distance was later recalculated at safe distances of 600,000 miles.

Some astronomers say releasing their discoveries quickly and openly is critical. When a new asteroid or comet is discovered, scientists need as many sightings as possible in order to precisely plot its orbit and gauge how close it may pass to Earth.

In many cases, an asteroid gets lost in the star field before its orbit is calculated.

Usually, new observations are immediately reported to the Minor Planet Center, where it is posted on a Web site.

In June, the National Research Council plans to convene astronomers and experts in risk assessment and hazard management meeting to consider how best to release news of potential disaster.

Worries of comet-delivered catastrophe have caught the attention of Hollywood, which this summer delivers two asteroid disaster movies: ``Deep Impact'' and ``Armageddon.''

AP-NY-05-14-98 0614EDT

New rules needed to avoid asteroid false alarms

Release at 5 P.M. EDT (2100 GMT)

By Deborah Zabarenko

WASHINGTON, May 13 (Reuters) - Two months after a false alarm about a possible killer asteroid screamed into the headlines, scientists on Wednesday urged NASA and other astronomers to rethink how they give such news to the public.

Asteroids and comets continually pass by Earth, sometimes at uncomfortably close distances,'' the scientists wrote in a NASA-funded report, adding in an accompanying statement, ``With the flood of discoveries expected within the next decade also will come the risk of false alarms.''

Such a false alarm occurred on March 11, when the International Astronomical Union announced that an asteroid would pass near Earth in 2028, and might hit the planet. A day later, NASA said the space rock would miss Earth by 600,000 miles (960,000 km).

The report by a scientific panel of the National Research Council was under way before that incident, but their statement took note of it and urged a coordinated response by the astronomical community.

Already, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has drawn up interim guidelines for reporting such potentially hazardous objects (PHOs), saying in April that no statements about a threatening object will be released ``without verification and consensus.''

NASA also said its Office of Space Science needed to be informed 24 hours before a public announcement about a PHO.

There are probably about 2,000 asteroids and comets that could menace Earth, according to NASA, and the U.S. space agency is working with the U.S. Air Force and other countries to identify all PHOs with a diameter of .6 mile (1 km) or more.

Such an object, if it struck Earth, could kill everything in the area of the strike and send enough dust into the atmosphere to cause a global cloud, chilling the planet and decimating most life on it.

Some astronomers believe that such an asteroid strike exterminated the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. There is no way of knowing when a comparable hit might occur, except to identify all large asteroids and comets near Earth and track their orbits.

In defense of such space objects, the scientific panel said that ``these tiny worlds offer a trove of clues to the solar system's birth and early history'' and said that they might be used as ``stepping stones'' toward human missions to Mars.

To learn more about them, the panel recommended coordination by NASA, other government agencies and private research organizations in using ground-based telescopes to search for asteroids and comets.

The panel also called for more research about extraterrestrial materials, such as meteorites, which are believed to come from asteroids.

They also applauded current space missions aimed at studying asteroids and comets, and said that eventually there might be annual missions to one or more asteroids.

Solar system birth clues seen in Greenland meteorite

COPENHAGEN, May 7 (Reuters) - A Danish expedition will go to Greenland in July to search for fragments of a meteorite that crashed to the ground last December, hoping to find clues to the birth of the solar system.

``It was a blazing meteorite...that lit up the night sky and fragmented over the southwestern part of the Greenland icecap,'' the Tycho Brahe Planetarium astronomy centre said in a statement.

Astronomer Lars Lindberg Christensen, a member of the expedition, said that the Greenland meteorite was likely to have been the size of a private car.

``We believe that this was a very big meteorite,'' he told Reuters. The object from outer space had probably been a so-called stone meteorite -- one of three main categories of meteorites, he said.

Traces of more than 10,000 meteorites have been found on earth. The Greenland find is special because it is one of the few that was actually seen falling down.

The Tycho Brahe centre has over one hundred eyewitness reports, three seconds of video-tape and data from a U.S. defence satellite of the meteorite's plunge through the earth's atmosphere.

So far it has been possible to calculate the orbits of just four meteorites crashing down on earth, Christensen said. Advanced computer technology and mathematics were currently being applied on the information collected to determine the Greenland meteorite's orbit, he said.

Because the fragments had landed on ice, any pieces found would be ``nearly pure and not contaminated,'' as was often the case with meteorites found in forests or agricultural areas, he said.

The stone material believed to have composed the Greenland meteorite would be different from any stone or rock found on earth.

``The fragments can provide clues to the birth of the solar system,'' Christensen said.

The four-man expedition, made up of a polar scientist, an astronomer, an electronics engineer and a mountain climber, planned to spend up to four weeks in Greenland.

Meteorite fragments found by the expedition would be sent to the Geological Museum in Copenhagen for analyses. Some collected material would also be sent to research institutes in other countries.