Huge Asteroid to Fly by Earth Thursday

Originally posted by Manhater
reply to post by Insomniac

 

Last I checked they said it was 1000 to 2300 M wide. So which is it?

Earlier reports said 550m... maybe it got revised. Given the distance though it makes very little difference from an imaging point of view.

reply to post by Manhater


1000 to 2300 feet, not meters. That's 305 to 701 meters. For star trek geeks like me, that means it's somewhere between the size of Kirk's original Enterprise, and Picard's Enterprise E in size. By my own calculations I figure it's between 393 and 880 meters, but I was being extremely generous and erring on the side of large.

Originally posted by smyleegrl

Originally posted by ngchunter
For anyone who wants to watch, provided the weather is good I'll be providing live video of the asteroid tonight through my telescope starting around 11pm or 12 am eastern time here:
www.justin.tv...

edit on 14-6-2012 by ngchunter because: Fixed the time. Thanks erik

Bookmarking you now!!!! Thanks for doing this!

Do you mind if I share your video with my students next year?

Wow, I'd be honored.

Originally posted by Insomniac
Considering it's around 3,343,998 miles away and only measures 500 meters across, I think they did a marvelous job. Incidentally with membership you get to use the telescope hooked up to your pc.

iTelescope.net is better; they give you all rights to the images without watermarks and access to the raw original FITS data, scientific quality stuff. I have slooh as well for a backup in a pinch, but I'm going to cancel it because it's just not worth it for me. YMMV though, if you just want jpg images and aren't into heavy duty data crunching, photometry and astrometry, then slooh is perfect, but if want the raw fits data for more advanced purposes then itelescope.net is way better.

Nothing wrong with slooh's image of the asteroid though; no telescope on earth can resolve it as more than a point-like light source at that distance. That's what asteroids look like, unfortunately. People get spoiled with images from probes that get to visit these things up close, but from back here on earth that's what we see. For generations of astronomy that's all we ever saw and we had to infer the shapes of asteroids by occultation timings across multiple locations. We figured out what they looked like using careful empirical study, but it wasn't until the dawn of spaceflight that we ever got to see one up close for real.

I will say that I find it more exciting to see the asteroid move against the star field rather than directly tracking it like Slooh does. The latter is more technologically challenging, but I could do it with this asteroid if I wanted. It's really simply a matter of personal preference for me, but I think it's more natural to see the asteroid slowly moving across the field. I think most people can relate to it easier and it's therefore more pleasing, so that's what I'm going to do later tonight. Speaking of which, it's time for me to start loading up my car with the equipment and get on the road to start setting up at my observing site.

reply to post by ngchunter


Thanks ngchunter I'll check iTelescope.net out. Good luck with your observing session tonight. I'm guessing by your name that it's a really dark site you go to.

Shoot I am just popping on for a minute but can anyone tell me where to look in the sky? What is the trajectory and where do we look? Also what time frame do we have on this? I will check back for replies.

I am really excited to be able to see this. Also an Asteroid this large should have debris fields follwing it right? So the show may be spectacular.

Do we know how long it will be in a visual field? Do I need binoculars? Naked eye?

reply to post by ngchunter


Just logged on to your feed, will be checking back through the night, any idea what time this is going to happen and can you answer any of my above questions?

Have fun, wish I were there!

Originally posted by antar
Shoot I am just popping on for a minute but can anyone tell me where to look in the sky? What is the trajectory and where do we look? Also what time frame do we have on this? I will check back for replies.

I am really excited to be able to see this. Also an Asteroid this large should have debris fields follwing it right? So the show may be spectacular.

Do we know how long it will be in a visual field? Do I need binoculars? Naked eye?

I'm afraid you'd need a very large telescope - the asteroids no brighter than pluto. Also for an asteroid it's not very large and is about 14x the distance of the Moon, which is close astronomically, but quite a distance when trying to view something small. Try the website from the OP; slooh.com has a recording of the programme streamed earlier and a recording of the asteroid from the 13th.

Slooh.com

Originally posted by Insomniac
reply to post by ngchunter

 

Thanks ngchunter I'll check iTelescope.net out. Good luck with your observing session tonight. I'm guessing by your name that it's a really dark site you go to.

Heh, not really, just a parking lot tonight. I can go wherever, but getting away from the light pollution's not all that critical for this asteroid. The key thing is just getting away from any obstructions. Other than a few power lines I should be set. The broadcast is up now. The asteroid is almost dead center in the view and it is slowly moving to the left in the view. It's just a small dot but if you watch carefully you can see it.

cloudy here again, so thanks!

I'm sure others appriciate this too.

reply to post by antar

It's in my telescope's view right now. It's a small dot slowly moving to the left in the view. It's just above the center point of the image. You can't see it by eye or binoculars, you need a large telescope to do it like Insomniac said. Asteroids don't generally have debris fields around them unless they recently hit another asteroid which is an extremely rare event, even for asteroids in the asteroid belt. It's not like the movies at all.

Originally posted by Soylent Green Is People

Originally posted by Alda1981
...Can you actually PROVE there is no celestial body as Nibiru? Maybe it aint here now... maybe it will come in 20000 years... can you prove it doesn't exist?...

If it something hits us in 2000 years, then it isn't Nibiru.

For example, let's say I predict that a yet-undiscovered-by-mainstream-science comet (let's call it "Comet XX") will hit the Earth on January 1 of next year. Now let's say January 1 comes and passes without a comet striking the Earth. Obviously I would have been wrong.

Now, lets say 2000 years later a comet DOES hit the Earth. That does NOT suddenly make my earlier prediction right. Whatever comet that is that hits the earth 2000 years later probably has nothing to do with my prediction of "Comet XX" 2000 years prior.

edit on 6/14/2012 by Soylent Green Is People because: (no reason given)

you dont get my point... I didnt defend the theory of nibiru... i simply said that you cant rule out anything. Dont be 100% sure and especially insult people calling them eletards and nibiru freaks. It could be a mistake on the reading of the scripts... or anything else. My point is not to defend the nibiru theory but the mere fact that you cant be 100% sure of anything. You can simply talk without insulting.

Here's a timelapse of my view of the asteroid last night:

How about this one that came within 1 lunar distance in November 2011. It was 4 football fields in diameter! That is huge. Does anyone have video clips of this one?

lightyears.blogs.cnn.com...

I heard several of them come this close every year. It's a miracle we haven't been hit by a large one for many generations.

reply to post by ngchunter


Thank you so much for that, it must have been a wondrous night for you.

Originally posted by nOraKat
How about this one that came within 1 lunar distance in November 2011. It was 4 football fields in diameter! That is huge. Does anyone have video clips of this one?

I sure do. It was a similarly sized asteroid, but it passed much closer than the one last night (and therefore was much brighter in apparent magnitude).

This is for the new huge asteroid doing a flyby this week... didn't look at the dates on the previous posts while searching...

It's not too excitng since it's so far away. Still, a 3 mile wide asteroid is pretty damned cool.

www.msnbc.msn.com...

Here's another vid of it.

www.youtube.com...

Originally posted by WmassCrooner

Here's another vid of it.

www.youtube.com...

edit on 11-12-2012 by WmassCrooner because: Referring to a new asteroid, didn't look at previous post dates.

Something about that video doesn't seem right.

It seems to be moveing too fast relative to the background stars for it to be an asteroid 4.4+ million miles away. I understand this video could be a time lapse (although it doesn't look like that either --- but let's say it is for the sake of discussion)...

...what I'm talking about how it moves relative to the background. I would think something moving that quickly past the background of stars would be way out-of view in two days time, instead of making its closest approach.

That video looks more like a satellite (or something) very close to Earth -- NOT something 4.4+ million miles away.