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."

Comments

photo realistic sky generator software

[kbroom]

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.

Re:photo realistic sky generator software

[plaa]

Stellarium is an impressive piece of free software for Linux and Windoze that renders the sky at any given time given your coordinates.

As for a more general star-browsing program, XEphem is great (free for personal use, sources available). It takes a little getting used to, but is very versatile with lots of nifty features, and it allows you to load star catalogs to increase the number of objects it knows.

Any other astronomy programs somebody would recommend?

Re:photo realistic sky generator software

[wnknisely]

A number of people that I've talked with really like the free (beer) software Cartes du Ciel. You can find it at this website

There a great OpenGl lunar atlas that I'm using now as well (beats the heck out of the paper versions) here

There are links from either site to more software for variable star observering and sky chart contruction.

Re:photo realistic sky generator software

[LMCBoy]

I humbly submit my own project, a desktop planetarium for KDE:

http://edu.kde.org/kstars

Twice a century? Not really

[StupendousMan]

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.

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.

Name or Nominal Date +/- Nominal
Designation YYYY-mmm-DD HH:MM D_HH:MM (LD/AU)

1994 XM1 1994-Dec-09 18:54 00:02 0.3
2002 MN 2002-Jun-14 02:02 00:02 0.3
1993 KA2 1993-May-20 20:38 00:01 0.4
1991 BA 1991-Jan-18 17:18 00:01 0.4
1994 ES1 1994-Mar-15 17:16 00:01 0.4
2001 BA16 2001-Jan-15 20:29 00:01 0.8
1999 VP11 1965-Oct-21 18:47 19:28 0.9
2002 GQ 2002-Mar-31 03:31 00:01 1.1
1995 FF 1995-Mar-27 03:30 00:01 1.1
1996 JA1 1996-May-19 16:35 00:01 1.2
1991 VG 1991-Dec-05 09:22 00:01 1.2
2002 EM7 2002-Mar-08 00:58 00:02 1.2
2002 CU11 1925-Aug-31 00:42 05:33 1.2
2002 CB26 2002-Feb-08 19:11 00:01 1.2
2000 LG6 2000-Jun-02 21:38 00:07 1.3

You can generate such lists yourself at The NEO Program's list of Near Earth Objects.

Re:Disc of asteroid? Will it show phases?

[n1vux]

I don't think anyone with a pair of binoculars is going to be able to discern phases on this asteroid.

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.