But I do think it's very cool that these observatories are putting such live feeds online. The most exciting views are coming from radio telescopes like Goldstone and Arecibo. I visited Goldstone yesterday and will be posting about that tomorrow, once they have posted their best radar images.
And it completely ignores my thing to shut it down. The times in the image caption are wrong. Should say — UTC. Also the chart location needs to be stated. Parallax will effect the position of the asteroid as it is close to the Earth. On the Earth, Nations will be in anguish and perplexity at the roaring and tossing of the sea. The wicked will not stop till it is to late for them all if only they would read the Bible and get to know Jesus and want to go to Heaven Not Hell.
All that give their heart to the Lord and Read The Bible and tell his Word to others will live forever. In Heaven. Through out History Many have tried to wipe Jesus and the good from our history books. Read the Bible Jesus will Bless you more then i can.
Job 5. To which of the holy ones will you turn? In April it passed close enough for detailed radar probing by the giant radio dish at Arecibo, Puerto Rico. The Arecibo observations showed this asteroidal emissary to be a quarter mile meters across and remarkably round. Given its size and dimness, its surface must be quite dark and thus likely carbon-rich. Its rotation period is relatively long, 18 to 20 hours. In the grand scheme of things it's more micro-planet than minor planet, but we've never knowingly had something this big come this close before.
Were it to strike Earth, YU 55 would deliver a kinetic-energy punch equivalent to several thousand megatons of TNT.
It's the kind of potential threat that outer-space sentries lose sleep over. At the time the asteroid was , miles 1,, km from Earth. Radar illumination is from the top, so only half of the asteroid is apparent.
Note the hint of a large crater to the right of center in the later frames. Kelly Beatty But fear not: the Arecibo observations allowed dynamicists to recompute the big rock's orbit with enough accuracy to ensure that it won't strike Earth within the next years. That said, it will pass just , miles from Venus in , close enough to alter its orbit slightly. This adds uncertainty to predictions for its next close encounter with Earth in , when the minimum distance could be anywhere from , to 30 million miles.
So we might as well just enjoy this month's show. The asteroid will approach Earth from the sunward direction, so it will be a daylight object until just before the time of closest approach. A few hours later YU 55 should reach a visual magnitude of By the way, that bright thing near the Moon tonight is Jupiter.
Best seen from North America, the little asteroid YU55 will race far across the constellations in just 11 hours. Click here for a more detailed chart and instructions.
Use the chart here to get a sense of what part of the sky it's in, then download our detailed finder chart for use between 9 and 10 p. If you don't have a suitable scope, or if it's cloudy tonight, check out the live video webcast of asteroid YU55 from the inch telescope at Clay Center Observatory in Massachuetts continuously from about 6 p. Another live webcast is available from Bellatrix Astronomical Observatory in Italy.
Amateur asteroid sleuths Brian Warner and Robert Stephens have mounted a campaign to obtain detailed photometry brightness measurements of the asteroid. You'll need at least a or inch scope, a CCD camera, and ideally one or more of the standard photometric filters commonly used by professional astronomers. Part of the Goldstone Deep Space Communication Network, the Mars meter antenna is often used for radio and radar astronomy.
It serves a dual purpose as a communication receiver for interplanetary spacecraft. Meanwhile, this visit by YU 55 is providing an unprecedented opportunity for high-reolution radar study.
This SNR is heady territory for radar work, high enough to yield thousands of pixels across the object and to achieve surface resolution "comparable to what can be obtained by a spacecraft flyby mission.
Interesting that the K mile pass by Venus in is going to "alter the orbit slightly" while the 23K mile less distant pass of both the earth and moon this month apparently isn't going to add much uncertainty to the predicted orbit. Is this more a question of relative orbital speed during the pass or what? If anyone knows, I'd be curious to hear.
And, it'll certainly be closer to aphelion at that point so the asteroid itself will be moving faster in its own orbital path So why the difference? Log in to Reply. Craig: a very insightful question! I'm no expert on orbital dynamics, but it seems clear that the uncertainty about the Venus encounter's effects on this asteroid's orbit has to do with time, not space.
We're tracking the asteroid daily, so we know how close it's going to come to Earth on Tuesday with exquisite precision. But if you extrapolate that orbit out 18 years, the uncertainties add up.
We can't tell exactly how close it will come to Venus in , and a very small variation in that distance would have a relatively large effect on how much Venus alters the orbit.
FYI, the detailed finder chart linked in the online article is missing a phrase in the instructions on how to offset from Kansas City. At its brightest, it will look like a magnitude 11 star -- about times dimmer than the limit of human vision if one is looking at the night sky from a dark place with clear weather. Amateur astronomers may be able to see it slowly moving against the stellar background. Ray Williamson, head of an organization called the Secure World Foundation, said he hopes YU55 will serve as a healthy alert that the nations of the world need to get together and decide what to do if some future asteroid appears to be coming too close for comfort.
All sorts of schemes have been proposed for deflecting asteroids -- everything from blowing them apart with nuclear weapons to deflecting them gently with advanced rocket engines. But since the chances of a major hit anytime soon are so low, no plan has funding or international backing. Williamson says it's worth at least making plans. Asteroid YU55 is roughly spherical, spinning slowly.
It is darker than charcoal, according to NASA radar observations.
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