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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.
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.
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.
Do ya think any geeks will get laid that night, claiming that the asteroid will hit earth and it's "The Last Chance EVER!"?
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?
Someone should make a Celestia module for this like they did posthumously for the crater maker that sneaked by a few months ago.
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.
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
8 degrees / hour? is that even fast enough to notice movement with the naked eye?
No, it sure isn't. Of course, seeing as the object will peak at eighth magnitude, it'll be 16 times dimmer than the dimmest thing that most people can see with the naked eye anyway, so no one will really care.
A more interesting question is "will you be able to notice the movement in your telescope?" I happen to have a 4.5" Newtonian that I track stuff with in my backyard. Most of the stuff I track rotates 360 degrees in the sky in 24 hours. (And whatever anyone tells you about the Earth rotating - lies! It's the Celestial Sphere!) So that'd be... 15 degrees per hour.
Is this noticable? You bet. A star will fly out of my field of view in around three minutes. So 8 degrees per hour means I'll have to adjust my telescope's pointing at least every six minutes. That's TEN TIMES every hour.
Annoying, no?
Alf
In Soviet Russia, sig types you!
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.
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
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.
IF the numbers are down, I can recommend a few IT Managers that would be perfect filler...hmmm...how to talk them into it: Expand your Knowledge of Key Time Saving Devices (Getting rid of themselves)... Lemme kno...
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!
Yes, of course they accounted for that
1. Learn HTML
2. Post stuff others want to read
3. Read the faq.
Don't Bogart the fish sticks
What's annoying is having a Celestron with an automatic tracker, but for some reason freaks out when you try to get it to do an auto-seek or an alignment. And a customer service department that seems to be perpetually out golfing or something. (I've never gotten a live rep on the phone).
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
$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.
Case in point: this
You seemed to be talking out of your ass. Gravity is probably NOT quite like EM. Also, the Weak force is many many many times more powerful than gravity. Look at this chart. It some cases, it is almost as strong as EM.
A tip for good karma: People like it when you have links to support your point. Learn HTML and put links in your comments whenever possible. Google is great for finding relevant information.
Sorry, and I hope this helps.
Don't Bogart the fish sticks
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.
you think they work nights?
User #95088
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
It's all downhill after Clinton Bush Sr. got into office, I'm tellin' ya!
I remember learning the differences between the two words very often in my younger years.
There's nothing better then a good education!
(please, the above is a joke... don't think I'm serious with the "then" in there...)
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
Its funny how the truly stupid are the ones that like to jump all over another's errors. Its as if they are so convinced of their inferiority that they are always looking for another to err. In doing so they correct the mundane. Its good to have these mundane people around so that the brainpower of the intelligent doesn't have to be wasted on such menial tasks. Thanks!
guess it's time to break out a calculator and figure out what 3:00 UTC is for your timezone then, eh?
For Arizona, it'll be 8:00PM August 17th as far as I can tell, so work from there.
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
nice quote.
Where'd you pull that one from?
I hardly believe something like that to be in the Protestant christian bible.
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
Well, we did have an ice age not too long ago back in the early years of America. It's not that uncommon. Now, a complete freeze of the world, that's another issue all together.
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
1.3 times farther away than the moon means:
(moon distance) * 1.3 = (Distance of asteroid)
It's pretty simple. Although, I don't know how far away the moon is right off-hand.
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
Depending on the trajectory of the asteroid, it migh t be worse. If the asteroid is moving in the same apparent direction as the night sky, then its speed will actually be 15+8 = 23 degrees per hour. If if is moving in the opposite direction then it will be 17-8=7 degrees per hour. Most probably it will be something in between.
You will have to do the 8degree/h adjustment if your telescope normally tracks stars by itself (if it has an equatorial mount with a motor for example).
So anyway, with a telescope, knowing where to look the asteroid should be unmistakable.
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