Yale Students Capture Asteroid On Film

netringer writes: "Two Yale University students used the WIYN 0.9-meter telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory to capture a series of still images of asteroid 2002 NY40 on August 15-16, two nights before it made a close flyby of Earth. The still images were made into a cool digital movie that shows the asteroid streaking across the sky over a period of two hours. According to an AP story the students were supposed to looking at some binary stars when they decided to look a the asteroid instead."

Comments

I also got some pictures!

[nEoN nOoDlE]

I also took a picture of the asteroid about to hit earth... Here it is

We need more eyes on the skies

[marcsiry]

The state of near-earth asteroid detection is pretty pitiful. We need years of warning if we're to divert an asteroid, not days.

Asteroid hunting should be part of the basic curriculum for astronomy programs, if it isn't already. Multiply a half dozen students by every university in the world and you've suddenly increased our detection capacity by several orders of magnitude.

More links...

[countach]

Here is a link offering more info on NY40, and some more info here. And there is a video here.

here's the gif ;-)

[tanveer1979]

here is gif of the same in case you dont like quicktime ;-) hurray