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NASA Snaps New Photo of Incoming Asteroid
astroengine writes "Wider than an aircraft carrier and darker than coal, asteroid 2005 YU55 is soaring at over 11 miles a second straight towards Earth and moon on its latest path through the inner solar system. This new radar image was acquired Nov. 7 by the 70-meter radio telescope at NASA's Deep Space Network in Goldstone, Calif., and shows the approaching space rock in unprecedented detail." Phil Plait has posted some information from NASA about just how they're doing the tricky job of tracking the asteroid.
It just proves that asteroids are made up of perfectly shaped blocks.
Are you telling me that this is all an elaborate Minecraft advertising stunt?
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The new radar image looks like the bald scalp and the eyes of Phantom, the Ghost who walks. (Walker when he comes out of the African Jungles on missions). Indrajal Comics used to reprint them in India. Wonder if he was as popular in USA/Europe. Wondering how I never even noticed the racial overtones when I was young.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
...Faster than a speeding bullet, able to level entire buildings in a single blow. ;-)
... at the asteroid.
I vote for Bruce Willis. He did alright the last time around in that other documentary with Sharpe and that Arwen chick.
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Fuck, Sean Bean was in LOTR, not Armageddon. I should have said Mr Pink.
God damn it, learn to hit Preview and read your own posts.
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The article explains why the asteroid looks like a pixelated sprite taken from the era of Monkey Island.
For those that didn't want to bother reading both articles and just wanted to have a look at the image but then thought "WTF" after having a look at it:
"The individual pulses can be timed very accurately as well, so that the shape of the asteroid can be determined, too. If there is a bump on the asteroid, like a hill, then a pulse hitting that won’t travel quite as far as a pulse that hits a crater. It gets back sooner, and this can be measured. The spatial resolution of this method at the distance of YU 55 will be about 4 meters, so they’ll be able to make an image that’s about 100 pixels across of it."
image: http://news.discovery.com/space/2011/11/07/asteroid-2005-yu55-new-825.jpg
We apologize for not getting you a magazine quality glossy of an essentially black object moving at 11 miles per second through the vastness of space nearly a million miles away. We are in a bit of a budget crunch.
Sorry,
NASA
I am sad to say that that movie contained about as much science as any given 24 hours on the Discovery Channel nowadays...
To the haters: You can't win. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
soaring at over 11 miles a second straight towards Earth
A bit sensationalist no? More accurate would be "not quite straight toward Earth" or "not toward Earth at all but at some point that passes close to Earth".
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
The rock is bigger then Apophis and no name given?
Also, in this YouTube animation it looks like it will be a very close miss.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unfti6ZByj0
Hang on, did you just confuse Sean Bean and Steve Buscemi?
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
It's a space station.
Even if the quality of the photo left is not the greatest, we already know that is not a cube-shaped spaceship. At least there is still hope that change the course by itself.
Wow. The thing is right next to the planet, probably would make a big "kaboom" if it actually hit, and all we have so far is a badly pixelated image.
I think the tech could use a bit more funding to have more advance warning.
Give it to the folks at CSI, they'll be able to extra alien DNA from that photo. Imagine what they could do with the Hubble deep field...
I don't understand why they don't just send it to a crime scene investigators lab to have the image made crystal clear and so that we can view the asteroid at more angles.
I read the articles. I watched the video. But, I'm confused: why does the asteroid appear side-lit in the images?
If we're imaging the asteroid based on radar that's transmitted from the Earth, and the asteroid is heading nearly directly toward us, then we should be able to see images of the asteroid nearly full face on, rather than it appearing like a crescent moon with illumination from the sun, right? The radar illumination is from a source that spatially coincides with the receiving apparatus, so the image should appear more like the full moon.
What am I missing here?
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
That just means you don't get the reference.
If this is a "radar" image, where the telescope sent a pulse and got an image from the reflection, why in the picture does it look like the illumination is comming from the above the object? Shouldn't the whole visible face be illuminated? I would like to see all the detail received by the radar. If this is artificial illumination of a solid model build from the facing radar data, I wish the illuminator position would be near my point of view. If this is the actual radar image, then I am confused about the presentation.
I know, right? All they need to do is say "enhance" and it will be clear as day...
Wow the article that OP linked to is amazing! The only problem with it is that there were not enough exclamation marks! Needs more exclamation marks!
Nobodies Prefect
Tidbits for Techs Technology Blog
....elephants in size? How much olympic swimming pools does it displace if it was to hit the ocean?
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
WTG Discovery with your asinine, needlessly fear-mongering video clip headline:
Discovery News Videos: Space: Doomsday Asteroid
Somebody should be fired...
There was a time I when I really liked Discovery, but they have been becoming the Crap channel with a lot of their junk. Guess thinking isn't encouraged there. Thoughtful, interesting programming is pushed aside for more visceral stuff.
Getting the same feeling about Sirius/XM, which had such a bright beginning, now they're adopting all the idiotic practices I so despise of broadcast radio stations. Must be some disease in the media - brought about from sitting in studios too long and not getting out among the people.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
What is that strange 'woosh' sound that it's making...
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
An alien egg the size of an aircraft carrier? Now I'm scared.
"...oh my God, its full of Lego's..."
In space, no one can hear your woosh
Looks like we are pretty safe, but, it does pass through the moons orbit. Which makes me wonder, what if such an object hit the moon? While it probably wouldn't effect us much directly, what would the result be? We would certainly be able to witness the impact even without a telescope.
How would this effect our society? What would the moon look like afterwards? What kind of science could be done by observing this? Would we wake up as a society to the much more real threat of an impact on earth? Would this spur a renewed interest in space exploration?
Here's to hoping something hits the moon. I think it would be quite interesting.
-- Senior Software Engineer, Attorney appearance services, locallawyerapp.com.
Problem is ... money.
Networks need a lot of it to produce their shows, and the move to HD only worsened the problem as cameras and the like jumped in prices to accomodate. The RED cameras are popular because they're one of the cheapest, but the Epic kit's still $60k, and the broadcast HDTV cameras they're having to equip everyone with is easily in the $100k range. (Many shows known for destroying cameras still shot in SD purely because of economics - there's a flood of SD cameras on the market as everyone upgraded to HD).
Additionally, for cable channels, the cable/satellite networks have slowly been reducing the per-subscriber price per channel. And ad rates have been going down since there's really a ton of places to sell ads to nowadays (mostly online). It's why shows often have websites and direct people to view "bonus content" there. Plus the fact most people have competing choices for entertainment, lowering ad revenue further.
So you can air thoughtful shows on a very tight budget where you're basically sponsored by viewers (think PBS), but you're basically beholden to very little money as there aren't that many viewers wanting thoughtful TV. Or you can scramble for eyeballs and go for higher ad rates - hence viceral. Viceral sells, and you get more money out of it.
For satellite radio - that's a different story. Their CEO basically is scrapping everything that made satellite radio special in favor of trying to compete head on with terrestrial radio. I cancelled my sub after my favorite station went online only (close to $50/month with all the radios I had) and I had no more reason to listen. (Online only meant that I needed a smartphone, and why should I pay the online-only price of $8/month when there are free internet radio apps?).
It's the same reason why websites scramble to make the most inflammatory headlines possible - the more eyeballs, the more visitors, the more money. It's why we hear news on everything Apple (or everything is reframed to somehow involve Apple), and only the big things on Android or Linux or whatever - Apple attracts eyeballs, Android/Linux/etc doesn't. Especially since the Apple crowd is known to spend money.
It's full of anonymous assholes, too. Apparently.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
I always confuse Steve with his younger brother Sean.
How does a radio telescope image tell us that an object is "darker than coal"? Unless they meant "Has radio reflectivity less than that of coal"?
and for those who still don't, the reference is Eon, a pretty good novel by Greg Bear
and interestingly, while looking up the wikipedia page for that, I notice that Google says it is Edmund Halleys birthday today.. can it really be a coincidence that an asteroid flies past on this day? I think not..
That is no moon.
Yeah. Windows is coming to the maniframe and all they can find to whine about is one measly killer asteroid.
Have gnu, will travel.
I always assumed that the DSN antennas were used for spacecraft communications only, had no idea they were used for radio and radar astronomy as well.
Damn, if we had any real space capability in the US, 42 years after we walked on the Moon, we'd have been waiting to go out and catch the sucker, and bring it into a stable orbit at geosync. Then we'd have a *real* space station, to handle all kinds of communication, to beam solar power down, and as a station for interplanetary ships....
mark
Ying,
I'm reviewing your trajectory data, Just wanted to double check... I'm sure the astroid is going to miss us, but wanted to double triple check, you remember that probe that sort-of hit mars?
So your measurements of the acceleration were in inches per second, and slugs of force right? Thats what we have been using here at NASA, we never managed to convert to the metric system in the '70s.
As far as I can tell, this things going to miss us by a mile right? Or was that a kilometer?
Ross Youngblood
Yeah, I looked at it and I got impatient waiting for the interlacing to catch up. Took me a while, that's probably a good reason why I won't be working for NASA.
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
Obviously they forgot to say enhance.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Doesn't look anything like a spaceship.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
whose name sadly I cannot look up at this time...
I started shooting the tornado with my 600 mm lens, then switched to the 500, then the 300. when I reached for the 24mm, I decided I had better get out of there
actual story in the NPPA magazine in the late 70s.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Can't we come up with something better than an aircraft carrier for comparison? Does NASA have a list of comparison objects that says "400m = Aircraft Carrier"? First, aircraft carriers are about 330m x 75m x 20m. This thing is a 400m sphere, so it's a whole lot more massive. This thing would probably be a better comparison even though it's only 305m across. Anyone know any good rocks or holes on google earth that are 400m across?
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Here in Oklahoma, in the last 24 hours, we've had tornadoes, floods, and another earthquake. I'm not liking the looks of this asteroid thing.
Proverbs 21:19
They have touch the keyboard a few times as part of the ritual.
Obligatory: Red Dwarf -- Picture Zoom Sketch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUFkb0d1kbU
They could even double hack it!
If this thing was going to hit the Earth, is there any organisation or government who has a plan to deal with an asteroid impact threat?
It gripped her hand gently. 'Regret is for humans,' it said.
We apologize for not getting you a magazine quality glossy of an essentially black object moving at 11 miles per second through the vastness of space nearly a million miles away. We are in a bit of a budget crunch.
Sorry,
NASA
P.S. Due to further budget cuts, the James Web Space Telescope will be switched off. Further pictures will be taken when it comes into range of a Canon Powershot.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
No, I had to look up who Liv Tyler played in LotR; I couldn't remember the character's name. I was stuck thinking of LotR when I wrote the post.
Mmmmm... Elfin ears.
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...from The 5th Element; Duck and Cover!
729,000 Borg cubes, working as one.
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