Watch a Mile-wide asteroid Pass us By

The asteroid catchily named asteroid 7335 (1989 JA) is about four times the size of the Empire State Building and passed us by on Friday , the team at the The Virtual Telescope Project live streamed the event and have released this time lapse video of the passing.

For this, we remotely used a fantastic 24-inch (60cm) telescope in Chile, under one of the best skies of the Earth.

Here you can see a superb animation made with the images grabbed during our public event: asteroid (7335) 1989 JA crosses the field of view from the upper left to the bottom right and looks like a very short segment. Two bright streaks comes from artificial satellites.

Missed us !

a reply to: gortex

How far away from earth was it at its closest?

I imagine that would do significant damage if it had collided with the earth.....there must be quite a few of these things flying around in relatively near proximity to us.
Is it only a matter of time?

a reply to: Freeborn
It certainly is just a matter of time.

Whats scary are the ones we don't see coming.

a reply to: gortex

how disappointing ... 2022 and we still get images that look like 1960.

a reply to: Freeborn

How far away from earth was it at its closest?

I believe it was beyond the orbit of the Moon so not an immediate threat to us but one day we will have to brace for impact , or perhaps multiple impacts if China and the US decide to blow it up.

a reply to: seedofchucky

I've just had a quick look, this thing was just a little over 1 mile in diameter and missed by about 2.5 million miles....approximately 10 times the distance from earth to the moon.

If we were to get a really close up picture of it I'd suggest that its probably a bit too close for comfort.

a reply to: Freeborn

Yes, reality is not like the movies, where everything appears up close on camera, usually from several angles.

I imagine that would do significant damage if it had collided with the earth.....

According to this, at a distance of 200 km, people would suffer first degree burns from the fireball, the seismic wave could make some small damages, windows would shatter and around 30% of the trees in the area would be blown down because of the air blast. The final crater would have a diameter of 13.5 Km and a depth of 648 metres.

I used the size mentioned on Wikipedia, 932 metres.

a reply to: gortex

There are others that are a bigger worry, like (137108) 1999 AN10.

In 2027 it will pass "only" at a distance of 389.9 thousand km and will be visible with binoculars.

But, as vonclod said, the most worrying ones are the ones we don't know yet, as the ones we know are already catalogued and have their orbits studied.

a reply to: ArMaP

With a diameter of about 1.1 miles this thing was almost twice the size of the one you describe....

How big was the one that is believed to have led to the extinction of dinosaurs?

I'm sure I've read about rogue asteroids etc roaming around out there undetected.
And I'm equally certain I read that its considered 'imminent' and/or 'overdue' that the earth will be struck by something of this size or bigger....but of course both 'imminent' and 'overdue' in this context could mean anytime in the next 10 or 20,000 years or so.

a reply to: Freeborn

The number of big asteroids is always getting smaller as times passes, as they keep on being attracted by bigger celestial objects and none are being created (as far as we know), so what could have been a relatively frequent event some millions of years ago now is a rare event.

But rare doesn't mean impossible, so there's always the possibility of one that we haven't seen yet appearing with an orbit that will intersect the Earth's orbit exactly at the same point, resulting in a collision.

According to some theories, the asteroid that supposedly brought an end to the dinosaur era was 10 to 15 km wide.

a reply to: ArMaP

After what I witnessed as a kid in the very early 1970s I would not be so sure about the air blasts of one in our atmosphere .

On a summer evening I witnessed one streak over my head about 10.000 ft up it was gone in the blink of a eye but I never forgot the sight of it years ago I came across a video about the daylight meteor or apollo object of 72 , yet the one in Russia year's ago caused so much damage

a reply to: Freeborn

List of asteroid close approaches

a reply to: ArMaP

Like the one that skimmed over Russia not to long ago. Micro in comparison to this bad boy that just passed.
But the close one in Russia, blew out windows, caused seismic activity, and scared the living crap out of everyone under its path with a blinding flash.

a reply to: Macenroe82

That's what bugs me about the one I saw in 72 , I have jumped out of planes higher up than it yet it was silent and gone in seconds and huge , I am pretty sure it was the day light one that's on video

originally posted by: stonerwilliam
a reply to: ArMaP

After what I witnessed as a kid in the very early 1970s I would not be so sure about the air blasts of one in our atmosphere .

On a summer evening I witnessed one streak over my head about 10.000 ft up it was gone in the blink of a eye but I never forgot the sight of it years ago I came across a video about the daylight meteor or apollo object of 72 , yet the one in Russia year's ago caused so much damage

How did you accurately estimate the altitude of the object without knowing it's size or having something to use as reference? Particularly difficult if it was only visible for such a brief second or two. Perhaps the fact that you didn't witness an air blast is indicative that the object wasn't as close as it appeared.

a reply to: Navieko

Trigonometry and a nearby mountain and lots of time and patience , the daylight fireball on YouTube in 1972 did not cause a airblast either luckily enough as it was 1.5 km wide ?

a reply to: stonerwilliam

This?

It wasn't that big, it only crossed part of the upper atmosphere and didn't explode.

In Revelation 8 it describes what could be only 3 asteroid strikes in a short period of time. Or it could only be one but it was really messy. Maybe a hail of small ones before the main event of the burning mountain falling into the sea. And then the Wormwood strike.


7The first angel sounded, and there followed hail and fire mingled with blood, and they were cast upon the earth: and the third part of trees was burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up.
8And the second angel sounded, and as it were a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea: and the third part of the sea became blood;
9And the third part of the creatures which were in the sea, and had life, died; and the third part of the ships were destroyed.
10And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters;
11And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter.
12And the fourth angel sounded, and the third part of the sun was smitten, and the third part of the moon, and the third part of the stars; so as the third part of them was darkened, and the day shone not for a third part of it, and the night likewise.

And if I was to guess at the timeline this happens in the mid to late 2020s.

originally posted by: ntech
And if I was to guess at the timeline this happens in the mid to late 2020s.

Why?

One of these days one of them will come tumbling down and hit a country that might think it’s been attacked and retaliate with nukes, starting a chain reaction.

At this point, I don’t think the cockroaches could make a worse job of being the dominant species than we have.