A curious object is about to fly past Earth

Lets hope the trajectory is wrong, so that the government will be forced to zap it with a laser beam. Which will then cause it to splinter, and send projectiles hurling at our congress people and knock some sense into them.

Wish I still had my telescope. I forget the name of it, but there was one particular comet that was visible without the need of it a few years ago. Hale-Bopp, I think the name was, and I remember having a good time trying to get a good look at it from the telescope.

It's Planet X

just sayin

In these times there is four sentence what you don't want to hear, when you're talking about a curious object, which is about to fly past Earth.

"A meteor?"
"No Sir. Definitely not."
"How do you know?"
"Well, er... it's slowing down."
Independence Day

It's started on the same way.

[edit on 12-1-2010 by Sharrow]

Originally posted by Lemon.Fresh
It's Planet X

LOL.

If the X is regarding to it's size, yes, definitely. It's 10 meters in radius.

Originally posted by Box of Rain

Originally posted by SeekerofTruth101
Dashing through the constellations of Orion, Taurus, and Pisces rules out the object of being terresterial origin such as boosters from rockets or space metallic junk, if indeed it does not show any characteristic of being meteorites or chunk of rock.

The object is only "dashing through" those constellations as seen from Earth -- as the background constellations.

All artificial satellites seen from Earth could be said to be "dashing through" one constellation or another. I saw the ISS fly though Orion once -- and what I mean is that the stars in Orion were the background stars that the ISS was flying against.

That's only when you are tracking it with your eyes, not instruments that can give a fairly accurate distance.

Originally posted by Larryman
Oh, that's great. A 60-foot asteroid, passing Earth within 3-tenths of the distance to the Moon, made of iron, and with the Earth's magnetic field moving toward Russia at increasing speed. Can't see anything un-predictable about that. It's not like iron is attracted to a magentic field, or such.

It's not the earth's magnetic field moving toward russia. Just the North magnetic pole. And at 80,000 miles at its nearest, the magnetic attraction is all but nil.
F = ( Fm)2 μ0 A / (2 g2) per the Maxwell Force Equation
I compute it to be about 6 nanoteslas, plus or minus 2nanoteslas

Originally posted by Bunker or Bust
reply to post by Box of Rain

 

What time will I pick it up in the UK, I have a fairly decent scope.

2nd Line

It went by at 0045UCT.

Well, a third of the Earths distance from the moon is damn close, but, i think someone's getting their AU units mixed up. According to NASA's small body data base it will make it's closest pass on Jan 14th at a distance of 0.0029 AU.

I always thought that 1 AU was the distance of the Earth from the sun which is:
149597871464 Km e.g. multiply by 0.0029 = 433833827.2456 Km, this the closest the object will be to Earth.

The moon is 384403 Km away from Earth e.g. 433833827 / 384403 = 1128.59 which means the object will pass well over 1100 times the distance of the moon fom the Earth.

Or have i got it wrong ?

Maybe this whole Nibiru thing was being seriously exaggerated.

Just saying...

as long as this thing doesn't form a cross in the sky, i'm good.

www.jpl.nasa.gov...

Propelled into space - According to urban legend, a manhole cover was accidentally launched from its shaft during an underground nuclear test in the 1950s, at great enough speed to achieve escape velocity. The myth is based on a real incident during the Operation Plumbbob nuclear tests, where a heavy (900 kg) steel plate cap was blasted off the test shaft at an unknown velocity, and appears as a blur on a single frame of film of the test; it was never recovered. A calculation before the event gave a predicted speed of six times Earth escape velocity, but the calculation is unlikely to have been accurate and they did not believe that it would leave the Earth in reality. After the event, Dr. Robert R. Brownlee described the best estimate of the cover's speed from the photographic evidence as "going like a bat!!"

www.absoluteastronomy.com...

I remember seeing a program on TV (The History Channel/Discovery something) that talked about this. They even showed the single frame of film where it appeared as a blur.
Wouldn't it be something if it was this 900kg steel "manhole cover". At 10 m in diameter it seems like it might be the right size to match somthing like the cover. If that is the case then the United States put the first man-made object into space and not the Soviet's! Just a thought.....

(I wouldn't mind if it was aliens though!)

[Edited to add more links to story]

nuclearweaponarchive.org...

www.strangehorizons.com...


[edit on 12-1-2010 by Tyler Fawkes]

Originally posted by RestingInPieces

Originally posted by Box of Rain

Originally posted by SeekerofTruth101
Dashing through the constellations of Orion, Taurus, and Pisces rules out the object of being terresterial origin such as boosters from rockets or space metallic junk, if indeed it does not show any characteristic of being meteorites or chunk of rock.

The object is only "dashing through" those constellations as seen from Earth -- as the background constellations.

All artificial satellites seen from Earth could be said to be "dashing through" one constellation or another. I saw the ISS fly though Orion once -- and what I mean is that the stars in Orion were the background stars that the ISS was flying against.

That's only when you are tracking it with your eyes, not instruments that can give a fairly accurate distance.

I don't know what you're trying to say, but trust me -- The object did not come from "Orion", or "Taurus", or "Pisces". The object actually orbits between Earth and Venus, nowhere near the stars in those constellations.

Besides -- "Orion", "Taurus", and "Pisces" are not real places in space. The two brightest stars in Orion, for example, (Betelgeuse and Rigel) are each about 500 lightyears away from the third brightest (Bellatrix). That means the Bellatrix is actually closer to our own sun than it is to Betelgeuse and Rigel. So in actual 3D space, there is no bunch of stars grouped together called "Orion" -- that's just the way they look from Earth. In real space, many of the stars in Orion are not near each other at all.



[edit on 1/12/2010 by Box of Rain]

Fantastic find mate, I really got into this story! Thanks!

We should get a great look at it since on January 13th 2010 (tomorrow), it will apparently be 130,000 km from the Earth.

I was able to find the Telnet server address for "Jet Propulsion Laboratory" (JLP).

Telnet Server: ssd.jpl.nasa.gov
Telnet Port: 6775

JPL is apart of the Solar System Dynamics Group for NASA.
JPL currently runs a system on this telnet port called:
"Horizons On-Line Ephemeris System v3.35b"

HORIZONS System

The JPL HORIZONS on-line solar system data and ephemeris computation service provides access to key solar system data and flexible production of highly accurate ephemerides for solar system objects ( 478165 asteroids, 3015 comets, 170 planetary satellites, 8 planets, the Sun, L1, L2, select spacecraft, and system barycenters ). HORIZONS is provided by the Solar System Dynamics Group of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

So, I wanted to use this system; and it turns out that you can

While I was discovering the system and learning how to use it over a smoke, I decided that it would be really kind of me to take screen shots of my adventure. I was hoping to (in some way) track the asteroid 2010 AL30. This is serious news, folks. This asteroid will be with us for years. As we have all looked (or should have) at the Orbital Diagram we should already know that "2010 AL30" has been with us for some time. So, since it is here to stay I wondered if I could find the exact specific details and location of "2010 AL30" on the date December 21st 2012. By using Telnet and the Web Interface, it looks like not only will we be seeing this for years but it will go further out, then come back and repeating:

13th January 2010 (0.003AU)
1st Feb 2010 (0.1AU)
20th March (0.5AU)
13th October (0.4AU)
(in and out etc)
May 24th 2012 (0.29AU)
24th November 2012 (0.7AU)
21st December 2012 (0.9AU)

Telnet Screen Shots (For those wanting to know what to do):

1)[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/643692823672.jpg[/atsimg]
2) [atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/e7c771112de7.jpg[/atsimg]
3) [atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/860912ef1e11.jpg[/atsimg]
4) [atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/68de5c9d8ec1.jpg[/atsimg]
5) [atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/b3951d9e06db.jpg[/atsimg]
6) [atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/e3bd37ead553.jpg[/atsimg]
7) [atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/0459918acd5b.jpg[/atsimg]
8) [atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/3b17342a7789.jpg[/atsimg]

If your using linux, well; you already know how to telnet.
If your using Windows, just hold the "windows button" (on your keyboard) and press "R". Then type "cmd" into the text field. Press Enter. Type: telnet ssd.jpl.nasa.gov 6775

Then hit enter and you will be at the welcome screen. If you want to display the help/command menu within the system, type: ?
Just type a single Question Mark, nothing else
Hit enter.

You can sniff around and do a few other things, like listing other AL30 asteroids:

Comet AND asteroid index search:

NAME = AL30;

Matching small-bodies:

Record # Epoch-yr Primary Desig >MATCH NAME<
-------- -------- ------------- -------------------------
24499 2001 AL30 2001 AL30
80477 2000 AL30 2000 AL30
126194 2002 AL30 2002 AL30
143287 2003 AL30 2003 AL30
213055 1999 AL30 1999 AL30
483549 2005 AL30 2005 AL30
557687 2007 AL30 2007 AL30
588604 2008 AL30 2008 AL30
620072 2008 VK11 2008 VK11
647951 2010 AL30 2010 AL30

Here is a picture I made using software called "Stellarium" (great software go and get it). This is the orbital location in which you SHOULD see the passing of 2010 AL30: [approx]

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/6842dc19ace0.jpg[/atsimg]

Enjoy and snoop around that telnet port, lots of goodies and potential useful information for other "to-be" Very Important Asteroids


[edit on 12/1/2010 by the_denv]

reply to post by Spookydragon


Distance from earth to the sun 150 million km. 150,000,000 x .0029au = 435,000km


Distance from earth to moon 384,403km 435,000 – 384,403 = 50597

So according to my calc. it will pass 50,000 km outside the orbit of the moon.

reply to post by worldwatcher


yes, let's hope this isn't a herald - a 'little gaga-ette' - of a

southern cross...

reply to post by the_denv


that means tomorrow - according to this cute unix cli program -

this object will come within 279,000 miles of earth or roughly

1 lunar distance.

cool.

news.yahoo.com...

Originally posted by Phedreus

So according to my calc. it will pass 50,000 km outside the orbit of the moon.

Sorry mate, the correct approximation is 254,403 km. That is measuring from the Center of the Earth, to the Center of the Moon. Im not trying to be argumentative, Im just saying that is what would be considered.

If We wanted the exact distance, then we would have to account for the 3.8cm that the Moon moves away from the Earth towards Jupiter every year.

So every day (if you wanted to be exact) you would have to add:

27.3 Days - Lunar Cycle
Multiplied by the number of Moon Cycles (13), equals; 354.9.
354.9(days) divided by 3.8(cm), equals 9.33mm per day/lunar cycle..

The distance keeps moving.

From the website made about the Laser Reflector on the Moon:

Laser beams are used because they remain tightly focused for large distances. Nevertheless, there is enough dispersion of the beam that it is about 7 kilometers in diameter when it reaches the Moon and 20 kilometers in diameter when it returns to Earth. Because of this very weak signal, observations are made for several hours at a time. By averaging the signal for this period, the distance to the Moon can be measured to an accuracy of about 3 centimeters (the average distance from the Earth to the Moon is about 385,000 kilometers).
Source

So from the exact crossing of 2010 AL30 where it comes closest, you would have to INSTANTLY start adding 9.33mm per lunar cycle to 130,000 km (time of alignment).

So, basically its not 50,000km; but 254,403km outside of the Moon's orbit. + the 9.33mm per lunar cycle.

2010 AL30 is so close, that if you could drive your car for 66 days and 8 hours traveling within speed limit at 50Mph (50 mph= 81km/ph).

Remember this asteroid is 130,000km from Earth.

Infact it would take you 1,604.93 hours to drive to the location of the closest point of the asteroid!

[edit on 12/1/2010 by the_denv]

Originally posted by drphilxr
reply to post by the_denv

 

that means tomorrow - according to this cute unix cli program -

this object will come within 279,000 miles of earth or roughly

1 lunar distance.

Mate 279,000 miles = 449,006.976 kilometres. That is beyond the moon
(No offense mate, just having a bit of fun ).

Read my above post, and the original again

[edit on 12/1/2010 by the_denv]

Originally posted by the_denv
I was able to find the Telnet server address for "Jet Propulsion Laboratory" (JLP).

Telnet Server: ssd.jpl.nasa.gov
Telnet Port: 6775

JPL is apart of the Solar System Dynamics Group for NASA.
JPL currently runs a system on this telnet port called:
"Horizons On-Line Ephemeris System v3.35b"

Not that what you found was invalid, but you could just use the web based link I gave for Horizons:
ssd.jpl.nasa.gov...
The telnet interface does provide a few extra features if you need them, specifically:

* Small-body PARAMETER-MATCHING population searches
(use the small-body search engine as an alternative)
* Integration of USER-INPUT ORBITS
* SPK BINARY FILE production
* CLOSE-APPROACH TABLES

Otherwise it would probably be easier for most users to just use the web based interface above. I got the orbital data from a harvard server and put it directly into the asteroides.dat file in Cartes du Ciel; it now shows me the exact location of 2010 AL30 at all times. Now I just need to pull out the telescope and use CDC to issue the tracking commands to it.
www.stargazing.net...

reply to post by Tyler Fawkes

That is an interesting story, I had assumed that the force required to accelerate an object like that into an escape velocity, let alone 3x EV, would liquefy cast iron due to the amount of heat. Even if an object could withstand such temperatures the force would shatter it into pieces. I would further assume that the blur is this cover melting and the reason it was never recovered is because it vaporized and not because it accelerated into orbit.