The Minor Planet Electronic Circulars (MPECs) are published by the Minor Planet Center. They generally contain positional observations and orbits of unusual minor planets and all comets. Monthly lists of observable unusual objects, observable distant objects, observable comets and the critical list of numbered minor planets also appear on these circulars. Daily Orbit Update MPECs, issued every day, contain new identifications and orbits of minor planets, obtained over the previous 24 hours.
Famous quotes containing the words minor, planet, electronic and/or circular:
“If, for instance, they have heard something from the postman, they attribute it to “a semi-official statement”; if they have fallen into conversation with a stranger at a bar, they can conscientiously describe him as “a source that has hitherto proved unimpeachable.” It is only when the journalist is reporting a whim of his own, and one to which he attaches minor importance, that he defines it as the opinion of “well-informed circles.””
—Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966)
“The planet on which we live is poorly organized, many areas are overpopulated, others are reserved for a few, technology’s potential is only in part realized, and most people are starving.”
—Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921–1990)
“Sometimes, because of its immediacy, television produces a kind of electronic parable. Berlin, for instance, on the day the Wall was opened. Rostropovich was playing his cello by the Wall that no longer cast a shadow, and a million East Berliners were thronging to the West to shop with an allowance given them by West German banks! At that moment the whole world saw how materialism had lost its awesome historic power and become a shopping list.”
—John Berger (b. 1926)
“The night in prison was novel and interesting enough.... I found that even here there was a history and a gossip which never circulated beyond the walls of the jail. Probably this is the only house in the town where verses are composed, which are afterward printed in a circular form, but not published. I was shown quite a long list of verses which were composed by some young men who had been detected in an attempt to escape, who avenged themselves by singing them.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)