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Astronomers Catch Asteroid In Near-Miss Video
ananyo writes in with a story about an asteroid near miss and a neat video taken by researchers. "It may look like a blurry blob, but researchers using the InfraRed Telescope Facility (IRTF) in Hawaii have posted a video of 2012 KT42 — a small asteroid that zipped past Earth at a distance of just three Earth radii on 29 May — the sixth closest encounter of any known asteroid. The bright asteroid appears fixed, while background stars zip past but in fact the asteroid is zipping along at 17 kilometres per second. 'You get the view of riding along with it,' says planetary scientist Richard Binzel of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, who led the observations. At its closest, the asteroid was at a distance between the orbit of the space station (about 1 Earth radii) and geosynchronous satellites (about 6 Earth radii)."
I conjured up visions of a small asteroid that might have been a real big event if it collided. I am sure 23 feet in diameter would have made for a heck of a meteorite show. Thread to tremendous death and destruction on earth it isn't however. What is the official lower limit for an asteroid?
They use "non-standard units" to give the reader a mental picture of the near miss. It has nothing to do with perceived stupidity.
Ok. I used "stupidity" for "the inability of forming a mental picture for 10000 km".