Date: Tue, 18 Jul 2000 07:44:19 -0700 (PDT)
From: The Near Earth Object email List at NASA's JPL
Teacher's typo points him to an asteroid
By David L. Chandler
Boston Globe
July 15, 2000
Talk about a lucky mistake.
Earlier this month, as Fitchburg schoolteacher Leonard Amburgey was using his backyard observatory, controlled from a computer in his house, he was carrying on a conversation with friends outside through an open window. The distraction caused him to mistype one of the numbers to aim his telescope at a specific point in the sky.
Because of that error, what he saw through the scope was not what he expected. The streak of light that appeared in that patch of sky turned out to be an asteroid on a path that sometimes takes it across the Earth's orbit, making Amburgey the first person in Massachusetts to discover a near-Earth asteroid.
If you have access to the World Wide Web, you will find the full story here:
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/197/metro/Astronomical_findP.shtml