I saw this just now, and thought it was worth sharing.

http://lightyears.blogs.cnn.com/2011/11/03/asteroid-to-pass-closer-to-earth-than-the-moon/?hpt=hp_t2

Steve

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Warning, addicted to SETI crunching!
Crunching as a member of GPU Users Group.
GPUUG Website

Another not so subtle warning that we need to have a plan in effect to deflect or destroy the big one.

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Bob DeWoody

My motto: Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow as it may not be required. This no longer applies in light of current events.

I saw this just now, and thought it was worth sharing.

http://lightyears.blogs.cnn.com/2011/11/03/asteroid-to-pass-closer-to-earth-than-the-moon/?hpt=hp_t2

Steve

I wounder if this asteroid passes even closer next time around.

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The Kite Fliers

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Kite fliers: An imaginary club of solo members, those who don't yet
belong to a formal team so "fly their own kites" - as the saying goes.

I saw this just now, and thought it was worth sharing.

http://lightyears.blogs.cnn.com/2011/11/03/asteroid-to-pass-closer-to-earth-than-the-moon/?hpt=hp_t2

Steve

I wounder if this asteroid passes even closer next time around.

I'll let my great grand children worry about that one

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In a rich man's house there is no place to spit but his face.
Diogenes Of Sinope

Another not so subtle warning that we need to have a plan in effect to deflect or destroy the big one.

A Plan maybe. A proven Working Solution, that will be another problem...

Lt

Several articles on this object make a point of describing it as spherical. The best image to date, made in 2010 at Arecibo radio/radar observatory shows the edge of a well rounded hemisphere, as well as a curved terminator across the middle. The effect is like that of a crescent Moon. Very surprising that an object a mere 400 meters in diameter would have sufficient gravity the form itself into a sphere, or anything approaching one. The conventional wisdom says that an object must be somewhere between 100 and 200 miles in diameter to form a sphere. We have many examples of spherical bodies, down to the size of Saturn's moon Mimas, a little over 100 miles across, but apparently none smaller. Smaller bodies, like Mars' moons, are sometimes ellipsoidal, with three different diameters in each of three dimensions. Of course these are on the order of several miles in diameter. 2005 YU55 presumably has a mass on the order of a thousandth of these.

I think the inference is that this asteroid is laden with Iron which makes it heavier than other asteroids which has allowed it to form the semi spheric shape

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In a rich man's house there is no place to spit but his face.
Diogenes Of Sinope

This object is very dark in color. They have been calling it C class; A 'carbonaceous chondrite'. These are made of minerals-- silicates, oxides, and sulfides, not metals. There does seem to be something unusual in it being what astronomer Dr. Paul Heckert, specialist in observational astronomy called 'very nearly spherical' and caused a writer at Sky and Telescope to call it 'remarkably round'.

Huge Asteroid Will Pass Closer To Earth Than The Moon In Coming Days


This radar image of asteroid 2005 YU55 was generated from data taken in April 2010 by the Arecibo Radar Telescope in Puerto Rico. (NASA)

Assuming it misses we will have dodged a 4,000 Megaton (of TNT) Bomb. Scary Stuff

Assuming it misses we will have dodged a 4,000 Megaton (of TNT) Bomb. Scary Stuff

If this had been on a collision course, we wouldn't have been able to mount an effective defense. Scary is right!

Steve

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Warning, addicted to SETI crunching!
Crunching as a member of GPU Users Group.
GPUUG Website

Do the relative positions of the earth and moon during the approach affect the future trajectory of the asteroid? Some of the artwork depict it passing between the earth and the moon which will be near full. It would be neat if it crosses in front of the moon as seen from the ground.

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Bob DeWoody

My motto: Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow as it may not be required. This no longer applies in light of current events.

I'm not sure if the asteroid will pass between the earth and moon, only that the distance from the asteroid to the earth will be less than that between the moon and earth. When the asteroid passes, the center of gravity created by the position of the moon and the earth relative to the asteroid, will affect the trajectory. The question is how. It could be a forever harmless path, and end up in the sun. It certainly might be a problem again, only on a collision course. As stated, this is really scary stuff. Impacts with the earth are inevitable. It's only a matter of time. We may even be lucky enough to see a few strike other planets like what happened to Shoemaker-Levy. To have some sort of defense would seem to be a very good idea. Of course, even an eruption from Yellowstone could be an extinction event, and there is no way to prevent that. I guess we are lucky every second some world wide catastrophe isn't happening. The regional ones like floods, earthquakes, fires, hurricanes and tornadoes are bad enough, but a whole world event would be much worse.

Steve

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Warning, addicted to SETI crunching!
Crunching as a member of GPU Users Group.
GPUUG Website

The object will pass between the constellations Aquila and Pegasus when in the vicinity of Earth; well North of the ecliptic. This rules out passage in front of the Moon, from our line of sight.

Is anyone going to observe it with a telescope? I think it needs good stuff because it's small and dark and moves fast.

Is anyone going to observe it with a telescope? I think it needs good stuff because it's small and dark and moves fast.

I think it would be great if Hubble could get a shot or two of it...

Lt

ps WELCOME to the Forums!

Thank you!

It would be great but they say it's so small that it will only take some pixels on a hubble picture. But they also say it will be observed with radiotelescopes. Radio waves will be sent from Porto Rico to the asteroid, and than back to the Earth, in California. We might get a map of it. That would be so cool!

http://ciel.science-et-vie.com/2011/11/04/2011-yu55-un-gros-asteroide-va-froler-la-terre/

Sorry, it's in french.

Bienvenue, Marie. Another issue with using the Hubble Space Telescope to look at YU55 is the rapid passage of the object. The Hubble probably couldn't track it well enough to do useful work. Large optical telescopes will be used mainly for photometry and spectral analysis, rather than imaging. Several radio telescopes will be able to produce images of the object. Besides Arecibo, Goldstone, of NASA's Deep Space Network, in California, and the Byrd Observatory in West Virginia will be at work. Resolution on the order of 2 to 4 meters is anticipated. *******The unusual shape of the object is of particular interest. It's been called nearly spherical, but the preliminary shape model, made from observations at Arecibo about 18 months ago, when YU55 was much farther away, are more complex than that. From some aspects it appears spherical, but from others, cubical, or even prism-shaped. Even a sphere is hard to explain in such a small object, but these other features are even more so. If sky conditions are good enough tomorrow evening I will attempt to observe the object with my telescope. It will be a challenging task, given its dimness, ~ 11th magnitude.

Is like the Asterix and Obelix comics, where they used the say that they where only afraid that one day the sky would fall on their heads.

I know that one day it will happen, it occurred in siberia last century, imagine if it was in the current days over NY, Beijing, Tokyo, Paris, Berlin, Sao Paulo or any other big city?

It just shows that mankind is still not prepared to protect themself from such events, that can lead to their extinction.

Dinosaurs died from it, one day it will be our turn.

The nuclear weapons, which the major powers still have on hand, might be turned to good account. One, or a few of these, exploded in the vicinity of (not in or on) an asteroid, might nudge it off a course headed for Earth.