Close encounters #2: Asteroiden scheren langs de aarde

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ASTEROID FLYBY: Newly-discovered asteroid 2011 AN52 is flying past Earth today just inside the orbit of the Moon (0.8 LD). The space rock is only 8 meters wide, about the size of a small room, so even experienced amateur astronomers will have trouble photographing it as it zips through the northern constellations Draco and Cygnus glowing like an 18th magnitude star. But it is there

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Comet Elenin was just discovered this past Dec. 2010 by a Russian Astronomer Leonid Elenin. The question is why media hasn’t said anything about it? They have always made a big fuzz in the past about found comets. Is it because it is going to be coming a little too close for comfort and they don’t want people freaking out? Comet Elenin Could Hit Earth. This is a possibility because of the very unstable predictions of the Comet. Preliminary predictions have Comet Elenin coming within 42 million miles of the Earth with a very favorable comet sun angle for observers in the northern hemisphere. This is likely to change somewhat as additional data will tweak the orbit, but as it stands now we will see a spectacular comet in late October or early November 2011. When Comet Elenin first was discovered in December last 2010 it was calculated to pass 8.8 Au (8.8 times the distance of the Sun form us) away. But now these calculations has once changed again. Today the orbital calculation is down to 0.24 Au with a minimum as low as 0.15. But these data is being recalculated all the time and it could get even closer but that depends what it encounters in the Oort belt. Just so you know the Moon is 0.00256 away from us to give you a comparison. We must be aware the this comet could bring enormous amount of debris with it and Earth will pass through the debris trail. This will probably take place around the 6th November 2011 or later.

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Russian astronomers predicted Apophis may strike Earth on April 13, 2036

"Apophis will approach Earth at a distance of 37,000-38,000 kilometers on April 13, 2029. Its likely collision with Earth may occur on April 13, 2036," Professor Leonid Sokolov of the St. Petersburg State University said.

The scientist said, however, the chance of a collision in 2036 was extremely slim saying that the asteroid would likely disintegrate into smaller parts and smaller collisions with Earth could occur in the following years.

"Our task is to consider various alternatives and develop scenarios and plans of action depending on the results of further observations of Apophis," Sokolov said.

The asteroid, discovered in 2004, is considered the largest threat to our planet, although NASA scientists reduced the likelihood of a hazardous strike with Earth in 2036.

Russia's space agency announced its plans earlier to consider a project to prevent the large asteroid from colliding with Earth

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Op vrijdag 28 januari 2011 21:33 schreef Resistor het volgende:

Asteroid Discovery From 1980 - 2010

Gewoon, leuk filmpje

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Op vrijdag 28 januari 2011 22:58 schreef -CRASH- het volgende:

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Gewoon ..... omdat het al in Close encounters: Asteroiden op ramkoers (deel 1) staat.

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Op zaterdag 5 februari 2011 13:31 schreef -CRASH- het volgende:
RECORD-SETTING ASTEROID:
Tiny asteroid 2011 CQ1 buzzed Earth on Feb. 4th even closer than we thought. According to JPL's Near Earth Object Program office, the meter-wide space rock was only 5480 km (0.85 Earth radii) over the Pacific Ocean at closest approach. That makes it the nearest non-impacting object in their catalog. The encounter was so close, Earth's gravity altered the course of the asteroid by a whopping 60 degrees.
Full story

[ link | afbeelding ]
Trajectory of Asteroid 2011 CQ1 - February 4, 2011

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Op zaterdag 5 februari 2011 13:31 schreef -CRASH- het volgende:
RECORD-SETTING ASTEROID:
Tiny asteroid 2011 CQ1 buzzed Earth on Feb. 4th even closer than we thought. According to JPL's Near Earth Object Program office, the meter-wide space rock was only 5480 km (0.85 Earth radii) over the Pacific Ocean at closest approach. That makes it the nearest non-impacting object in their catalog. The encounter was so close, Earth's gravity altered the course of the asteroid by a whopping 60 degrees.
Full story

[ link | afbeelding ]
Trajectory of Asteroid 2011 CQ1 - February 4, 2011

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Op zondag 6 februari 2011 13:54 schreef Keiichi het volgende:

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Een astroide van 2m groot ongeveer zal niet zo desastreus zijn als deze in zou slaan. Voordat ie de grond bereikt heeft zou ie al voor een groot deel uit elkaar zijn gevallen.

Hoba Meteorit

Largest Meteorites Rare Footage

Magnetic Meteorite in the desert

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Op maandag 7 februari 2011 04:49 schreef -CRASH- het volgende:

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Ik zou toch geen ijzer/nikkel gevalletje van 2 meter op me dak willen krijgen....

Zoals de 2.7 meter grote Hoba meteoriet Grootfontein, Namibia
[ afbeelding ]

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Op maandag 7 februari 2011 11:49 schreef Keiichi het volgende:

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Je mag er vanuit gaan dat die meteoriet wel een stukje groter was toen in nog in de ruimte rond zweefde.

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Found in 1920, early ideas of recovering nickel
from the 60 ton chunk of solid metal soon were abandoned
as uneconomic. A subsequent attempt by the
American Museum of Natural History to obtain the
Hoba Meteorite for its display also came to nothing
because of transport difficulties, after which it was
declared a National Monument in 1955.

Surprisingly, no crater or altered rocks have been found at the impact site,
which together with the mere
fact of its survival as a single mass, suggests a low angle of atmospheric entry and a fairly low velocity to
allow a soft landing. During its passage through the Earth's atmosphere melting caused the shallow pits
and depressions on the meteorites upper surface.

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Op dinsdag 8 februari 2011 11:36 schreef Frutsel het volgende:
Nog een recente ontdekking die zeer dichtbij de aarde komt

Asteroid: 2011 CA7
Date: February 9
Distance: 0.3 LD
Diameter: 4 m

en:
Asteroid 2009 BD
Date: June 2
Distance: 0.9 LD
Diamter: 9 m

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Fireball in the skies over Salem County?
It’s a bird, it’s a plane ... no it’s a meteorite?

If you were lucky enough Monday, at around 12:45 p.m., you looked to the skies over Salem County and saw a majestic, flaming fireball falling through the atmosphere.

“So far we have 30 reports of a fireball moving in a general west to east direction as seen from the northeastern United States,” said American Meteor Society official Robert Lunsford Monday afternoon. “Daylight fireballs are rare and must be exceedingly bright to be noticed with the sun in the sky.”

One sighting happened right here in Salem County.

Woodstown resident Walt McGuniess called the Sunbeam and described the meteorite as it flew over top of Woodstown High School.

“I was out on a walk with my son and then I looked over top of Woodstown High School and this huge meteor came hurdling through the sky,” said McGuniess. “It was spectacular, like a huge fireworks display.”

Lunsford called it a random event.

“This was most likely a random event not associated with any known meteor shower,” said Lunsford. “This object was most likely the size of a small car before striking the upper atmosphere (and beginning to burn up).”

Lunsford said the fireball terminated over the Atlantic Ocean.

“There is no hope for recovering any possible debris,” he said.

A Ridgefield Park man said he saw the fireball after glancing out a window during a break from his work Monday. HL Devore works at GalleryCollection.com in North Jersey.

“It was an amazing sight. I have never seen anything like it,” said Devore. “Their was a flash of light then a trail of smoke.”

Devore took to the computer and as with most types of technology these days the work spread.

Descriptions of sightings exploded on the social networking websites Twitter and Facebook. Posts came from people in New Jersey, Philadelphia, Connecticut, New York and even Egypt.

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New record: 19 asteroids discovered in one night

A telescope high atop a volcano peak in Hawaii has set a new asteroid-hunting record: 19 space rocks discovered in one night, the most ever by a single telescope, astronomers say.

The Pan-STARRS PS1 telescope, located at the summit of Maui's Haleakala volcano, set the mark on Jan. 29, discovering 19 near-Earth asteroids. Two of the space rocks have orbits that will bring them extremely close to our planet in the next 100 years, so scientists will be keeping an eye on them, researchers said.

"This record number of discoveries shows that PS1 is the world's most powerful telescope for this kind of study," Nick Kaiser of the University of Hawaii, head of the Pan-STARRS project, said in a statement Thursday (Feb. 24). "NASA and the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory's support of this project illustrates how seriously they are taking the threat from near-Earth asteroids."

Hunting for asteroids

Scientists discover asteroids by tracking their movement against the relatively static background of stars. To confirm their finds, researchers must make multiple observations within a few days or so to define the asteroids' orbits.

Otherwise, the asteroids are likely to be "lost," researchers said. Pan-STARRS PS1, which has been billed as the world's largest digital camera, is designed to snap hundreds of photos of the sky each night, then compare them to find moving asteroids in deep space.

Pan-STARRS astronomers picked up 30 potential asteroids on the night of Jan. 29. They sent their discoveries to the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Mass., which collects and distributes data about asteroids and comets, allowing other astronomers to re-observe the objects.

This helps spread the confirmation workload around to different teams, but the weather didn't cooperate well in this case, researchers said.

"Usually there are several mainland observatories that would help us confirm our discoveries, but widespread snowstorms there closed down many of them, so we had to scramble to confirm many of the discoveries ourselves," said Richard Wainscoat, also of the University of Hawaii.

Confirming the candidates

Wainscoat and several colleagues spent the next three nights following Jan. 29 searching for the asteroids, using telescopes at Mauna Kea Observatories in Hawaii.

They were able to confirm 12 of the space rocks, and other telescopes around the world confirmed another seven, bringing the total to 19.

The other 11 candidates got away, moving too far to be found, researchers said.

Two of the newly discovered space rocks will zip pretty close to Earth in the relatively near future. They pose no immediate danger, but a collision in the next century or so cannot be ruled out, researchers said.

The Pan-STARRS PS1 telescope ("PanSTARRS" is short for Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System) was designed specifically to hunt for potentially threatening asteroids. It has a main mirror 60 inches (1.8 meters) wide and a powerful digital imaging system that includes a 1,400-megapixel camera.

PS1 began searching for asteroids in May 2010. The telescope takes more than 500 photos of the sky every night, researchers said.

A NASA team and other dedicated astronomers routinely search for near-Earth asteroids that could pose a potential impact risk to Earth.

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Op woensdag 6 april 2011 20:11 schreef BarraCupraCuda het volgende:
jullie moeten World Invasion: Battle Los Angeles eens downloaden

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Op woensdag 6 april 2011 20:40 schreef -CRASH- het volgende:

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SYFY is een andere afdeling

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Op donderdag 7 april 2011 16:34 schreef -CRASH- het volgende:
[ afbeelding ] Op donderdag 7 april 2011 08:43 schreef ExperimentalFrentalMental het volgende:
06-04-2011

Forse planetoïde komt buurten in november

[ afbeelding ]

Op 8 november is heel eventjes een ander hemellichaam dan de maan de meest nabije buur van de aarde. Op die dag scheert namelijk de 400 meter grote planetoïde 2005 YU55 op een afstand van iets meer dan 300.000 kilometer langs onze planeet. Naar kosmische maatstaven is dat een nipte misser, zeker voor een planetoïde van deze omvang.

Voor wetenschappers biedt de komst van 2005 YU55 een mooie gelegenheid om het hemellichaam met telescopen en radarinstrumenten te onderzoeken. Zo vaak krijgen ze de kans niet om zo'n aardscheerder van 'nabij' te bekijken. Gemiddeld komt er slechts eens in de dertig jaar een object van deze grootte zo dichtbij.

Hoewel 2005 YU55 tot de 'potentieel gevaarlijke planetoïden' wordt gerekend, is de kans klein dat het binnen afzienbare tijd tot een botsing met de aarde komt.

© Eddy Echternach (www.astronieuws.nl)

(allesoversterrenkunde)

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Massive asteroid nearing earth in november
A massive asteroid will fly within the moon's orbit narrowly missing Earth later this year.

The space rock, called YU55, will hurtle past our planet at a distance of just 201,700 miles during its closest approach on November 8.

That is closer to Earth than the moon, which orbits 238,857miles away on average.
With a width of some 400metres and weighing 55million tons, YU55 will be the largest object to ever approach Earth so close.

Nasa spokesman Don Yeomans said: 'On November 8, asteroid YU55 will fly past Earth and at its closest approach point will be about 325,000kms away.This asteroid is about 400 metres wide - the largest space rock we have identified that will come this close until 2028.'

Despite YU55's close proximity to Earth, its gravitational pull on our planet will be 'immeasurably miniscule'.

Mr Yeomans added: 'During its closest approach, its gravitational effect on the Earth will be so miniscule as to be immeasurable. It will not affect the tides or anything else.'

It is, however, still officially labelled a 'potentially hazardous object' - if it was to hit Earth, it would exert a force the equivalent of 65,000 atomic bombs and leave a crater six miles wide and 2,000ft deep.

YU55 was discovered by Robert McMillan, head of the Nasa-funded Spacewatch Program at the University of Arizona, Tucson in December 2005.

It orbits the sun once every 14 years but will not collide with Earth for at least a century.

'YU55 poses no threat of an Earth collision over, at the very least, the next 100 years,' Mr Yeomans said.

Scientists around the world have long been discussing ways of deflecting potentially hazardous asteroids to prevent them hitting Earth.

One of the more popular methods is to detonate a nuclear warhead on an approaching asteroid to deflect it from its orbital path.

Last year, physicist David Dearborn of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the US argued that nuclear weapons could be the best strategy for avoiding an asteroid impact - especially for large asteroids and with little warning time.