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Asteroid Fly-By on August 18
ke4roh writes "An asteroid will fly near the planet and be visible with binoculars from the northern hemisphere August 18, so says this article. Astronomers say it will cross the sky at 8 degrees per hour and fade out of view as it approaches the sun and hence goes through its various phases - full, gibbous, half... down to nothing. Such a show only comes about twice a century, so take a look before it disappears!"
Another reader sends in a few useful links: "Here's the complete
article
from the folks at
NASA Space Science with extra links including details on the astreroid's
trajectory."
.. I am sure NASA has an oil drilling team on stand by as we read this.
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
8 degrees / hour? is that even fast enough to notice movement with the naked eye?
pair of decent binoculars: $60
tank of gas to drive to dark location: $20
Lawn blankets: $15
The expression on your face as you realise some NASA mathmatican forgot to carry a one......priceless
Chicago2600.net more than a lifestyle, its a survival trait.
Do asteroids cause mass suicide, like certain commets of the past?
The Leonid meteor shower was a great way for me to introduce my 6 and 3 yr old to astronomy. It was a night I will remember forever, as they will too hopefully. They still talk about the "stars falling from the sky".
My kids are actually really excited about this event. There is nothing betting then getting kids into science then direct experience.
it's coming from the vicinity of an ugly planet...a bug planet
Karma: Bad (mostly affected by moderation done to your comments)...Now i know why.
``Whoa, dude, that's rock's shaped really weird...''
``Yeah... looks like a dog bone or somethin'...''
*toke* *toke*
``Heh heh... check out Uranus...''
No, probably not.
- SMJ - (It's not just a name: it's a bad aftertaste.)
Stellarium is an impressive piece of free software for Linux and Windoze that renders the sky at any given time given your coordinates.
I bet it will make it much easier for the untrained people to find the asteroid in the sky (considering its trayectory.
"As it nears Earth, however, the space rock will brighten, soaring to 9th magnitude on August 18th. That's about 16 times dimmer than the dimmest star you can see without a telescope." Wow. Now I just have to blow $300 on a telescope powerful enough to let me see a dim light. What a story, thanks Slashdot!
Hope it doesn't happen before 6 p.m. If it does, I'm going to have to orchestrate a "distraction." >:)
Do ya think any geeks will get laid that night, claiming that the asteroid will hit earth and it's "The Last Chance EVER!"?
Into his mouth? This intrigues me.
Did he swallow all of it? Did he let it dribble out and soak his clothes? Did he form a sort of fountain with two other men gulping down the overflow?
Do you have a newsletter I could subscribe to?
We can be quite sure that is *not* made out of:
- Gouda cheese
- recycled AOL CD's
- Rubber
- Cookie dough
....
Maybe that'll help them to narrow the options down1. Wait for another asteroid story on /. (approx 5 minutes).
2. Post bruce willis / liv tyler joke (approx 21 seconds).
3. Sit back and watch the karma roll in (unknown).
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
*hide*
If a train station is a place where a train stops, what's a workstation?
from the don't-drink-the-koolaid dept.
I'm interested to know how you connected an asteroid fly past with the Jonestown Massacre, if indeed that is what your reference to "koolaid" is about.
Someone should make a Celestia module for this like they did posthumously for the crater maker that sneaked by a few months ago.
... obviously didn't see 'Starship Troopers'.
NASA's plan:
1. Report doomsday asteroid heading for earth
2. ???
3. Profit!
Hard work usually pays off over time, but procrastination pays off now.
I will be in the Sierras that weekend....Yes!
"In the year of the new century and nine months,
From the sky will come a great King of Terror...
The sky will burn at forty-five degrees.
Fire approaches the great new city..."
In the city of york there will be a great
collapse, two twin brothers torn apart by chaos
while the fortress falls the great leader will succumb
third big war will begin when the big city is burning."
every year theres one passing by, and getting closer and closer each time. I guess the next ice age will be upon us soon. Don't expect NASA to help with their political mumbo jumbo to get anything done.
It will be visible on August 18th (8/18), move 8 degrees an hour, and have a brightness peak of 8th magnitude?
The astrologists and numerologists are gonna have a field day with this one. Time to get into the fortune business, being that programming is in the dumps.
If the damned thing is also shaped like an "8", then we are never gonna hear the end of it.
Table-ized A.I.
Anyone here remember comet Hykataki (sorry bad spelling)? Now that was an impressive show! Not only could you see it perfectly with the naked eye, but through field goggles or a small telescope it was truly a grand vision! The only drawback to having seen that is that everything else is kind of a let down... =:::(
"To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit." -Stephen Hawking
Has anyone else entertained the possibility that they are pretty sure it will hit on the 18th, and issued the press release saying it would be visible with binoc's so that the amateur astronomers who think it's on a collision course won't get any press, so as to prevent public panic?
Didn't think so.
Why, yes, I AM a Pagan Libertarian.
You mean thye asteroid could be slashdotted?
Ah, now I understand why they predict you won't see the asteroid with naked eyes. You'll see it with telescopes, because telescopes use mirrors, and since every telescope uses it's own mirror, those mirrors are not suffering from the slashdot effect.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
[remember 'the left wing is NOT on fire] Relax, there's no danger of a collision. Repeat is you look at the system of Hercules you will see an asteroid that is NOT going to hit the earth.
Privacy is terrorism.
Numerology only works in languages where letters can also represent numbers, like Hebrew and such -- not English, certainly, nor Chinese, etc.
When a language's letters are numbers, one of the sets must, obviously, be driven into the unconscious, leaving its other for denotation. All trinities, for example, have the characteristics of Mother-Father-Issue (except, of course, to the Catholic Church, where all three aspects are male....) This includes political theory (thesis, entithesis and dialectic,) economics, most fields of endevour.
If eight represents the first day of the second week. I will remind the gentle reader that in order to be reborn, one must die.
Strange how the articles "every 50 years or so," seems a lot mroe frequent then the "twice a century" the summary stated.
M@
Krispy Cream is people
from the article:
"Flybys like this happen every 50 years or so," says Don Yeomans, the manager of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program office at JPL. The last time (that we know of) was August 31, 1925, when another 800-meter asteroid passed by just outside the Moon's orbit. In those days there were no dedicated asteroid hunters--the object, 2001 CU11, wasn't discovered until 77 years later. At the time of the flyby, no one even knew it was happening.
========
So uh, why have i heard of 2 just this year that came about a moons distance or less from smacking us? weird.
That confirms what I think of numerology: absolute rot.
It's not just the Catholic church: the entire Christian church has the Holy Trinity with all three parts being referred to as male.
So do you think the microbes that inhabit these wandering rocks have any clue as to thier fates?
Actually, asteroids pass even closer to the Earth every year; most of them are just smaller than 800 meters. In many cases, we don't detect the objects until after they've gone past.
Here's a list of objects which have come closer to the Earth than 2002 NY40 in the past decade or so. The final column shows the closest approach in terms of the Lunar Distance (between Earth and Moon). For 2002 NY40, that's about 1.3.
You can generate such lists yourself at The NEO Program's list of Near Earth Objects.
Michael Richmond "This is the heart that broke my finger."
mwrsps@rit.edu http://stupendous.rit.edu
...might effect the trajectory of the asteroid. It doesnt sound like they put any thought into that. I also have two unrealated questions. 1. How do I make URL links words of my /. stories
2. How can I get my Karma up? (that sounds bad but its not)
I once shot a man who posted too many, "Imagine a beowulf cluster of these"
I notice that the article doesn't say anything about whether the asteroid will show an apparent disc from Earth, but this is easy enough to calculate, I suppose--
.0000016 radians approx .000092 degrees approx .33 seconds of arc.
Diameter of asteroid: 800 m
Perigee distance: "1.3 x distance of Moon"
Distance of moon: 384,000,000 m approx.
Thus, perigee distance: 500,000,000 m approx.
Angle subtended by asteroid: 800 / 500,000,000
=
=
=
And this is only at perigee, of course.
By comparison, the disc of Neptune subtends about 3 seconds of arc (don't remember exactly), and just shows a disc in larger amateur telescopes. I don't think anyone with a pair of binoculars is going to be able to discern phases on this asteroid.
hyacinthus.
Pinging 2002-NY40.sol with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 198.116.142.34: bytes=32 time=122s TTL=127
Reply from 198.116.142.34: bytes=32 time=125s TTL=127
Reply from 198.116.142.34: bytes=32 time=127s TTL=127
Reply from 198.116.142.34: bytes=32 time=120s TTL=127
Ping statistics for 198.116.142.34:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 120s, Maximum = 127s, Average = 123s
You just want us all to run a trojanned Makefile that gives you a remote prompt, don't you. We're on to your games.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Numerology only works in languages where letters can also represent numbers, like Hebrew and such -- not English, certainly, nor Chinese, etc.
Unless of course numerology is a phenomenon of ordered sets of symbols. Or if that is too broad for comprehension, then at the very least please acknowledge that to the extent which the roman alphabet can be mapped to the hebraic alphabet, whatever numerological values exist in the latter must also be inherent in the former.
Please note that I am not offering an opinion on whether numerology provides anything of value.
He suggests that maybe, just maybe, humans and technology are Gaia's attempts at preventing another catestrophic impact.
His article is a good read at Reason Online.
Downsize DC Today!
If you were not taught something as rudimentary as the difference between "then" and "than" in school, I'm starting to think that the Republicans might be right when they talk about how today's public schools aren't getting the job done. :(
If we'd only just listen to Al Gore, we'd have an HDTV camera pointed at us out there beyond the moon, and we could sit in our livingrooms and watch all these space rocks whiz past in glorious living color.
But no, we gotta elect a guy who, well, who can say *what* is going through his mind other than the perpetual thought, "I gotta screw things up fast 'cuz 2004 is around the corner."
This article says the asteroid will "... glide past our planet only 1.3 times farther away than the Moon." I take that to mean it will be 2.3 times as far away as the Moon. Am I wrong?
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
Star chart software in generally is pretty cool, but even someone who can only find the big dipper should be able to find this asteroid given the small map at the "trayjectory" link you provided. All you need to be able to find are Vega and Deneb. Vega will be the brightest star in the sky, and it will be pretty much staight up for most of the Northern Hemisphere at around midnight. Deneb will be the bright star just a short ways off to the north and east of Vega. There will be a 3rd bright star further south and a little farther off, called the eye of the eagle. These 3 bright stars make up the Summer Triangle that region of the night sky. You can't miss it, really. If you just look up and turn around in a circle, the 3 things that will stand out will be the big dipper, the summer triangle, and a bright orange star in the east called Arcturus.
If you are not in to astronomy a little bit though, seeing the asteroid may well be anticlimactic for you. It will just be a faint star that moves against the backround.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
Which planet?
What planet do you live on?
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
No, but rapid phasing will be discernable as a rapid drop in brightness, equivalent to apparent albedo drop -- much faster and less linear than increasing distance would account for. (Good point that we shouldn't expect to see the phasing, though. Nice to see back of the envelope reasonableness checks!)
Sigs? We don't need no stinkin Sigs.
FOO
User #95088
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
my bad
Looking at the future table, we might get out the binoculars to see these rocks on the given days:
But there aren't all that many rocks that we know about on the way here.Twice a century? Perhaps a little more often - and if we get more funding for watching for the Big One, we'll likely find out about substantially more rocks coming close, so if you miss this one, there's a fair chance you'll catch the next show.
I hate call waitin`~+~~~
NO CARRIER
I thought this was the NASA site I was visiting, until I saw them call the asteroid a 'big space rock'. Or what?, I was rather suprised to find that the scientists at NASA called the Big Space Rock an 'asteroid'. I don't get it. I thought these were the sort of people who would try and sue you for calling it that. I now apologise for my light and probably very offensive use of the term 'sue'. I'm sure they wouldn't dream of suing anybody. Don't sue me.
Politics is derived from two words - poly, meaning many, and tics, meaning small blood-sucking insects.
Well, I'm not sure why you insist such a mapping is valid ... IF I understand your meaning correctly. As I wrote earlier in the post, it is the unconscious vector in languages like aramaic, I believe, Hebrew for sure, ancient Greek perhaps, but I doubt that Latin Numerals (e.g. LXII)could possibly have been interpreted as Latin words, nor Latin words be homonymous with Roman Numerals. Perhaps the numerals were uppercase to ensure such a separation was made. A similar case can be made for Chinese; where the numbers look like any other ideogram to Westerners, Chinese have no trouble seeing one and the other without driving one meaning into the unconcious. Indeed, from what I know of reading Chinese, numerals and ideograms are identical, but that's another story.
For clarity, it was (and still is, I trust) the custom among those calligraphers and scholars who are chosen to copy the Torah to add the numerical values of each line as a method of proofreading. So, if you can accept that whatever is not conscious is unconscious, (which seems obvious until one looks deeper) then numbers correlate with words. In Hebrew, this correlation was intended; all words that relate to sitting (chair, squat, sofa, settee, bench, bleacher) have the same, unique root, which has a unique number.
Since the unconscious, by that definition, is connected to everything and its language seems to be symbolic imagery, then the importance of the contents of our personal unconscious (a fragment of everything, but more than and other than the conscious,) the two denotations can refer to each other, and are useful as meditational tools, as a mandala is useful.
There is another kind of thinking that is also called `numerology' that is more universally true. I touched on that in my mention of `trinities.' This, clearly, is a different beast, and, just as clearly, is completely symbolic. Its development was the Taro(t).
The numbers' symbolic values and meaning are the same across the two traditions (taro and kabbala).
But I cannot support the use of transliterated numbers to Latinized languages (English, etc.)
If you are interested in my sources, email me. Annamerikin_AT_operamail_DOT_com