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Large Near-Earth Astroid Will Fly Past Earth On April 19 (phys.org)
William Robinson quotes a report from Phys.Org: A relatively large (650 meters) near-Earth asteroid discovered nearly three years ago will fly safely past Earth on April 19 at a distance of about 1.1 million miles (1.8 million kilometers), or about 4.6 times the distance from Earth to the moon. The asteroid will approach Earth from the direction of the sun and will become visible in the night sky after April 19. It is predicted to brighten to about magnitude 11, when it could be visible in small optical telescopes for one or two nights. For comparison, Chelyabinsk meteor was 20m. Small asteroids pass within this distance of Earth several times each week, but this upcoming close approach is the closest by any known asteroid of this size, or larger, since asteroid Toutatis , a 3.1-mile (five-kilometer) asteroid, which approached within about four lunar distances in September 2004. The April 19 encounter provides an outstanding opportunity to study this asteroid, and astronomers plan to observe it with telescopes around the world to learn as much about it as possible.
Maybe you could give them some leeway. What they actually see could be an artificial satellite zooming by, it's just that those people don't know what they are looking at and make assumptions.
https://www.spaceanswers.com/a...
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
Yes she wears a strapon.
Are you just trolling? Meteors, as in "shooting stars", are obviously perfectly visible with the naked eye. It's actually much easier without a telescope because they're bright enough, happen kinda randomly and sweep a large part of the sky.
If you're talking about asteroids, then you're right that you'd need a telescope to see them. You also can see the bright ones with a wide-angle camera and a long time exposure.
1.8M km is bit over 16 hours for Earth, given its orbit speed around Sun. Does anybody know how far it would go from Earth assuming we would be in worst place of our orbit or is it actually crossing our orbital plane and timing was all that helped here?
Aww, someone has been spied on while having quality time with his hand.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I always cringe when I hear people claiming they saw a planet or a meteor.
(looks down)
Hey, I saw a planet!
Another flyby...Another missed chance for a cleansing fire...
Crivens! I kicked meself in me own heid!
I always cringe when I hear people claiming they saw a planet or a meteor.
Why? A number of planets are often quite clearly visible in the night sky. Likewise, it's not unusual to see meteors/shooting stars/whatever you want to call them, especially during 'storm' periods like Leonids, Perseids, etc.
It seem the existence of asteroids like this indicates that Earth hasn't cleared its orbit and is not a planet.
For you as an astronomy major, some freshman definitions:
* Meteoroid: something that flies through space.
* Meteor: something you see in the sky as it is burning up in the atmosphere.
* Meteorite: something you pick up from the ground, after it survived burning up in the atmosphere.
Therefore, logically, people who think that they can see meteors are not delusional because that's exactly how meteors are defined.
Ezekiel 23:20
Our civilization only appears to be strong however I think protecting ourselves from threats from these objects is an area where we need to make a lot of improvement. I have a number of these near earth passbys in my memory of the last few years.
If they are increasing then we should be paying closer attention to planning to deflect them. If we are just getting better at spotting them then it just means we haven't been paying attention to the threat and it shows us we should have been figuring out how to do this years ago.
It should be a brain dead international agreement to devote resources to defending ourselves from being a hit by a mass of rock and ice from space because it is something that threatens us all, no matter how petty our differences are. From my understanding the amount we spend, globally per year, on watching comets from space is the same as it is to run a single fast food chain outlet location for a year.
If the Chelyabinsk had hit near a population centre I think this is something we would treat more seriously.
This group has an interesting hypothesis about the conclusion to the last Ice Age. Fascinating and a little sobering too.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Sure would be cool if we could land something on it and slow it down and maybe move it to a high orbit so we could play with it for a while.
When someone writes "near Earth", I imagine really close. Am I the only one ?
1.8 millions kilometers still feels pretty far away, even at that scale.
Irrelevant news and morons using moderation to mod down what they disagree on. 2018 resolution: so long.
So-called amateur "astronomers" are a sorry bunch of autistic, antisocial losers who don't know what they are supposed to be doing. The media is also to be blamed for overplaying their questionable "contributions to science". The fact is, the ordinary citizen has no business owning and operating a telescope. Time to put an end to this.
Mother of god, let's have some elementary proofreading of headlines.
Seriously? When I see Jupiter (which is coming up right around dark, the brightest thing in the sky to the west besides this week's full moon) it doesn't seem that scary. Why do you cringe? Venus is quite beautiful as well. With my 10" scope I can take Saturn -- easily seen with the naked eye -- and magnify it to where we can see its rings and moons. As for meteors, I remember lying out on a dry lake bed far from city lights during one of the better meteor showers -- can't recall any more which one -- and seeing an absolute rain of them, two or three per second, for hours. Quite the opposite of a cringe-worthy experience.
You must be a very delicate soul, if tiny lights in the sky make you cringe, or if other people talking about seeing the tiny lights makes you cringe.
rgb
Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
Well, these are pre-Shuttle definitions. In fact, they are pre-spaceflight definitions.
Ezekiel 23:20
It doesn't really, normal people understand the terms correctly regardless.
Ezekiel 23:20
In natural science, many classifications are a little bit artificial, since nature operates with things as if they were just sets of particles, which they are. What is a planet, and what is an asteroid? Nature doesn't care! Humans do? Well, that's their problem.
Ezekiel 23:20