A curious object is about to fly past Earth

reply to post by ngchunter


Hey that's cool that you have a telescope that can do that, are you taking any pictures of it?

Yeah you can access more information on the telnet server about any asteroids that you can on the website. I know you got the info you needed on the website but even the website claims that more is to be found on the telnet server.

NOTE: Although the web-interface to HORIZONS provides nearly all capabilities of the primary telnet interface (and email interface), it does not provide the following:


* 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

Source

What telescope you got to run that software on?

True that it would be easier for normal members to just use the website, I just dont know why someone would want to have less information.

[edit on 12/1/2010 by the_denv]

Originally posted by the_denv
reply to post by ngchunter

 

Hey that's cool that you have a telescope that can do that, are you taking any pictures of it?

Thanks, yeah pictures are quite possibly the only way I'll even be able to see it - you can pick up a lot dimmer objects in a 1 minute exposure than you can with just your eye glued to the telescope. I've got an 8" LX200 classic. The thing I love most about it is how cross-compatible it is with software. If a program is said to have telescope control it probably means it can at least control the classic LX200s. I usually use cartes du ciel for remote control over the network - I just leave it running on the laptop next to the telescope and come inside where it's warm. I need another serial-to-usb cable to do that while controlling the deep space camera though, so I'm going to have to bear with the frigid temperatures tonight. I'll post pics if I get anything.

reply to post by ngchunter


Fantastic! Amazing!

Awful nice of you to freeze your arse off for ATS

Nice one, looks like we are all going to get a peak at this thing without interference from TPTB

Kudos to you man!

[edit on 12/1/2010 by the_denv]

reply to post by spikey


Damn Americans LOL ..... metric "ahhhh we don't need to know that dude"

Originally posted by SeekerofTruth101
reply to post by Box of Rain

 

While that is true, do know that NORAD keeps track of every space junk, down to a piece of nut, more so when this 'oddity' is of size that can be seen with telescope, let alone radar tracked. NORAD certainly isnt being very forthcoming with informing the scientific community what it is, while the russians with equal capabilities, are saying something else.....

Well, what are the Russians saying???

Originally posted by Zeta Reticuli
I hope its a UFO as well. but theyre too sly to be discovered and keep a close eye on...

How funny would it be if it was that tether incident coming back to us? haha the aliens were prolly like "F*& that lets throw it back at them!!" haha

I know that you were just kidding, but, there's no way that it could be from the tether incident because, if I recall correctly, the tether was about 4 miles long. Don't quote me on that though.

reply to post by Devino


I agree that it probably did not go into space, but I think it would be hilarious/interesting if it did, and that is what it is. I cannot hardly wait to find out what it actually is though. My money is on an asteroid....

[edit on 13-1-2010 by Tyler Fawkes]

Latest update:







Note the amount of activity on the image!

wow thaniks for putting those updates of the object on here @ ATS....

there is a hell of a lot of activity in that short snaphot ???? I wonder if this could be it

areply to post by Romanian


Nice catch. I've been trying to image it, didn't see any spurious bright streaks so that must have been a satellite only visible from that observer's pov. If I got anything at all it's dim as heck, nothing obvious appeared at all. I'll have to spend some time doing image analysis later and subtract my dark frames to see if I caught it. I had conflicting orbital elements from harvard and from JPL, so I mainly went with the ones from JPL. I'd love to know what that observer used.

Yes, there is one satellite . However, there is a second object too , does not appear to be orbital. As for our "asteroid" , still do not have any official confirmation on what the object is , so we can safely call it UFO (Unidentified Flying Object ) for a few more hours..

Originally posted by Romanian
Yes, there is one satellite . However, there is a second object too , does not appear to be orbital.

You mean the dancing hot pixel on the far left side of the image? Yeah, it's not orbital, it's not real either. It's just a very nice indication of that LX200's periodic and polar mounting error, which is why it makes a nice sine wave.

Even if I can't find anything in my images after I subtract the dark frames, I'll upload them and let everyone here on ATS hunt for it or anything else in the images if they want.

[edit on 13-1-2010 by ngchunter]

reply to post by the_denv


Distance from earth to the sun 150 million km. 150,000,000km which is 1au
distance from earth to the moon 350.000km
according to dragon the object would pass within .0029au of earth so .0029au is approx 435,000 km. (150,000,000 x .0029)

if the moon is 350,000 km away and the object is going to pass 435,000km out from earth, then that means it will be 85,000 km outside the average distance of the moons orbit. This seems to be a simple calculation so im not sure where your coming up with your number.

[edit on 13-1-2010 by Phedreus]

Originally posted by Phedreus
reply to post by the_denv

 

This seems to be a simple calculation so im not sure where your coming up with your number.

I got my information from the OP:

A curious object is about to fly past Earth only 130,000 km (0.3 lunar distances) away. Catalogued as a 10m-class asteroid, 2010 AL30 has an orbital period of almost exactly 1 year.

I don't know where you got your information.

reply to post by EvolvedMinistry


At this point of time, whatever and whoever says is purely speculation at best. However, AL30 is not a figment of imagination, a thought, a belief or anything else. It is a fact, as factual as the sun that rises from the East. You can see it with telescopes as its distance is less than that of the moon to Earth, of which we can figure out craters.

Only thing is, it is just a small dot. Thousands of rocks flies through our neigbourhood solar system often, but what makes this oddity special is its orbit which is closely similar to Earth - one year orbit around the sun.

At worse, we still have the Hubble Telescope, which is under civilian administration and not military, thus if necessary with enough political will, it can be made to take a shot of it, the way our moon had been captured once before.

So, hang on, soon we will know for sure what it is, hopefully.

With its size and orbital path, it poses no danger to Earth, should it even alter course and impact Earth. Not much damage is expected, possibly just a large hole the size of a stadium estimated.

Should we not have knowledge of Atomic bombs, and presumed a box as just TNT, we would know the impact would not be devastating. But since we do know atomics and seen the effects of what a small 'Fatboy' nuke could do, it would be safer to watch closely this 'oddity' s develope over our skies. It's not the size, but what's in the package.

American scientists believed it to be artificial, remnant of some part of leftover spacecraft. German, Italians and Russian believes it to be an asteroid, its present orbit a mere coincidence in similarity to Earth's. They...believe...it's orbit ...will change...after today.......????

www.newscientist.com...

Originally posted by SeekerofTruth101
They...believe...it's orbit ...will change...after today.......????

More like, better refined after today. Since it's such a recent discovery and we have such a small arc of observations I wouldn't place any huge faith in the exact orbital characteristics until we have good radar data and more optical observations over a longer time period.

reply to post by ngchunter

No, not talking about the dancing pixels - lol i was enthusiastic at first, but i realised it is a patterned dance lol with a lot of pixels doing the same move. I talk about 2 meteorite-like object in the frame.

Originally posted by SeekerofTruth101
...Only thing is, it is just a small dot. Thousands of rocks flies through our neigbourhood solar system often, but what makes this oddity special is its orbit which is closely similar to Earth - one year orbit around the sun...

Its orbital period may be like Earth's -- 366 days, as far as they know right now. However, its orbital path takes it inside the orbit of Venus (towards Mercury) and out past Earth, 3/4 of the way to Mars.

At least that's the preliminary orbital period and projected path based on only 2 days of observation:

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/2e9194ed9f29.gif[/atsimg]

The 366 day orbital period is newsworthy because that means it will be back next year, very close to the Earth again.

I wonder if it was near the earth this time last year, or is this object in a new orbit -- perhaps its orbit having been altered by something (Venus?) sometime in the recent past.


[edit on 1/13/2010 by Soylent Green Is People]

The video of 2010AL30 taken by Vodniza and Periera was made through a 14" Meade using an SBig camera. I doubt a scope of less than 10" diameter would capture this object on video without actually tracking it.

WG3

www.planetary.org...

According to the latest data it has a rotation of 9 minutes which is very "fast" for an asteroid. Typically between an hour and a day from what I can determine. Anyone more of an expert than I am care to comment on this?