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.

Comments

From the article, about the pixels:

[Superken7]

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

Re:Bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

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

That's no asteroid.

[DontBlameCanada]

It's a space station.

Re:Bullshit

[Again]

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.

Re:Why side-lit?

[Anonymous Coward]

Up in the image is earth-ward. The vertical axis is the pulse return delay, and the horizontal axis is doppler shift of the pulse return.

Re:Wow

[Jason Levine]

Probably, but this wouldn't be within arm's length.

The Earth has a diameter of about 12,756 km. A human face (from tip of nose to back of head) is about 8 inches. (Yes, I actually measured mine.) The asteroid will pass no closer than 324,600km from the Earth. This gives us the equivalent "bullet distance to face" distance of 203.5 inches, or nearly 17 feet. If that's "arm's length", you have some very long arms! Remember, space is big. Mindbogglingly big. (Insert Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy quote here.)