Close encounter asteroid

[solbjerg]

Hi

Next friday (feb. 15.) those interested (with good telescopes) should be able to see the passing of an asteroid that comes so close that if we are extremely unlucky it can possibly take out a TV satellite in geosynchroneus orbit.

If it were hitting the earth - which it is not - the energy of the impact would be somewhere around a 1000 Hiroshima bombs.

(sorry this was a personal estimate based on 50 m diameter and a mass density of 2,6 and a speed of 30 km per second) a revised estimate is then only 100 hiroshima bombs (by lowering the speed to 10 km per second)

http://www.gizmag.com/asteroid-da14-close-call-2013/25745/

Cheers

solbjerg

[Toppack]

At the speed that the asteroid is moving it will probably be Long-gone

before I can get my little telescope focused and tracking. :shock::?

We also have a problem with Big trees getting in the way. :?

[solbjerg]

Hi Toppack

According to the link I left you should be able to find the time it passes there and as I remember they said that it moved over the sky with the speed of the apparent moon size ervery minute, so you have some minutes to set up your telescope :-)

If you are tree-locked try the plains :-)

You probably have to find it by noticing the stars it blocks from sight for a short while. I do not expect it to shine as there is no atmosphere out there. Perhaps one can see a sleight reflection of sunlight from it.

Cheers

solbjerg

p.s. I just read in the link that the object will be fairly bright - but it is small so it may be difficult to spot - I will try here though :-)

 

At the speed that the asteroid is moving it will probably be Long-gone

before I can get my little telescope focused and tracking. :shock::?

We also have a problem with Big trees getting in the way. :?

[Toppack]

My telescope is an older but good 130.mm Reflector,

but it does not have motor-drive, so I think it would be almost impossible to track an asteroid, even one that close.

I always intended to add motor-drive and computer-control to it,

but always got distracted by other hobbies.:sad:

[Melvin_Deal]

Much out there!

 

You must have a really fine telescope solbjerg!!:wink:

 

There is much information on this out there.

 

"It provides us the next best thing to doing a spacecraft flyby of an asteroid," said NASA's Johnson. "It's kind of nice that nature gives us these natural opportunities to examine these objects and learn all we can about them."

 

Sincerely,

-Mel

Live long and prosper!

[solbjerg]

Hi Melvin

I have a telescope called Tasco - it was fairly cheap to buy.

From 300 meters I can easily read a font size 16 - not that I do that very often though. :-)

The apparent brightness of this asteroid is quoted as 7 and I hope I will be able to see it - it is very close - as these things go.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnitude_(astronomy)

 

Cheers

solbjerg

 

You must have a really fine telescope solbjerg!!:wink:

 

There is much information on this out there.

 

"It provides us the next best thing to doing a spacecraft flyby of an asteroid," said NASA's Johnson. "It's kind of nice that nature gives us these natural opportunities to examine these objects and learn all we can about them."

 

Sincerely,

-Mel

Live long and prosper!

[solbjerg]

Hi

Unfortunately the weather here by me made it impossible to see the sky, so I did not see DA14 with my own eyes.

It seems though that the next close approach will be in 2046 and that it then will be 50 times as far away, the chances that it will hit us in the foreseeable future is very small - less than a 5 millionth I think from what I have read.

But we did get a small meteor in Siberia on the same day!

As our ability to track and monitor and register the "near" objects in the sky increases I suspect that we will hear more about these things in the future.

Cheers

solbjerg

[LaurenceJ]

Hi solbjerg,

 

Sorry to hear that the weather conditions in your area wouldn't allow you seeing it for yourself. Hey, but something to be glad about is that there were no reports throughout our solar system (I hear things in my travels ;-)) of around 1000 or *even just* 100 Hiroshima bombs destroying everything in its radius and circumference, and beyond that. . . . I'll take that as very very good news. :-)

 

Depending upon where we live (I hear that matters - there I go again, hearing things) one thing it seems we can count on is the uncertainty of weather, and many times the unreliability of weather forecasts!

 

Perhaps that is one reason "weather" has that name; it sounds exactly like another word, yeah I know you've got it already, 'whether" and we know what that means. Ok, sounds lame I know, so I had better go and rest my brain cell. Yes, you read that correctly. :-)

 

Have a good day good sir.

 

regards,

Laurence

[solbjerg]

Hi Laurence

Thanks for your comments, - yeah for the time being we seem to have survived.

They say that the one in Siberia had nothing to do with DA14 but I wonder anyway. - when the Shoemaker-Levy comet hit Jupiter in the eighties there were at least 9 large fragments that hit also.

Did you get a glimpse of DA14?

I wonder whether the weather was better by you? :-)

If you only have one - it must be quite large!! :-)

Cheers

solbjerg

 

 

Hi solbjerg,

 

Sorry to hear that the weather conditions in your area wouldn't allow you seeing it for yourself. Hey, but something to be glad about is that there were no reports throughout our solar system (I hear things in my travels ;-)) of around 1000 or *even just* 100 Hiroshima bombs destroying everything in its radius and circumference, and beyond that. . . . I'll take that as very very good news. :-)

 

Depending upon where we live (I hear that matters - there I go again, hearing things) one thing it seems we can count on is the uncertainty of weather, and many times the unreliability of weather forecasts!

 

Perhaps that is one reason "weather" has that name; it sounds exactly like another word, yeah I know you've got it already, 'whether" and we know what that means. Ok, sounds lame I know, so I had better go and rest my brain cell. Yes, you read that correctly. :-)

 

Have a good day good sir.

 

regards,

Laurence

[gavind]

That was close. If this ever happened, we would be back to stone age or even further on a snap of a finger.