Near-Earth Asteroid Discovered Via Crowdsourcing

astroengine writes "The ESA's Space Situational Awareness (SSA) program has scored its first hit. Although SSA astronomers have detected asteroids before, this is the first time that a near-Earth object (NEO) has been spotted by the group of volunteers who analyze automated data from the 1-meter ESA Optical Ground Station telescope on Tenerife. Although details are scant, asteroid 2011 SF108's orbit takes it to a closest approach of 30 million kilometers (19 million miles, or roughly 100 times the average Earth-moon distance) from Earth — a distance considered 'safe.'"

Comments

Re:They way it went down

[ackthpt]

Poster one, "Hey I found NEO a 1,000 miles out"........

I wonder if they had moderation?

Poster one, "Hey I found NEO a 1,000 miles out" +1 Interesting

Poster two, "That's odd. I just found one 900 miles out" +1 Interesting

Poster three, "That's cool, the one I just spotted is 800 miles but I can't tell what direction it's headed in?' +1 Interesting

Poster four, "You're all wrong it's 500 miles out and stationary. I'd guess it's 50 miles across. Wait I looked again, it's still fixed in the sky but I was wrong it's 75 miles across, er maybe a 100" +1 Funny

Poster five, "I've got you all beat we're having an unscheduled eclipse!" -1 Troll

Poster six, "That's nothing. There's two moons in the sky only one is really, really big. I wonder............." -1 Overrated