A house-sized asteroid is set to miss Earth by a whisker later today, passing just 7,600 miles (12.000 km) above us.
The asteroid was discovered by the LINEAR near-Earth object discovery team in Socorro, New Mexico, just last week.
Peter Lake is an amateur astronomer from Australia that captured some of the first images of what will be a very close pass of Earth by asteroid 2011 MD. (See the image here.)
The image was actually taken yesterday with a 20-inch telescope in New Mexico controlled via his iPhone, through the Global Rent-A-Scope program. Isn't technology wonderful?
The asteroid, which was only detected last week, is about 25 to 55 feet (8 to 18 m) across, is expected to pass less than 8,000 miles above Earth’s surface on Monday, June 27th. Near-Earth asteroid 2011 MD will reach its closest point to Earth at about 1:00 PM EDT (17:00 GMT) when it will be observable from South Africa and parts of Antarctica. The approach will also be visible across Australia, New Zealand, southern and eastern Asia and the western Pacific.
The asteroid is in a very Earth-like orbit about the Sun, says NASA, while some astronomers reckon it may actually be just a piece of space junk. However, an analysis of its orbit indicates there's no chance it will actually hit us. In any case, at just under 20 meters in diameter, it would most likely fragment and burn up before impact anyway. That would be exciting, and make quite a show, but that’s about it. On its way back out again, after its orbit's been bent by gravity, it will actually pass well inside the ring of geostationary man-made satellites orbiting the Earth. There is a tiny chance, though, that it could hit a man-made satellite... We'll just have to wait and see.
Click here to see its trajectory.
Watch the video HERE - on YouTube.
According to Minor Planet Center’s ranking charts 2011MD’s trip will be the fifth-closest recorded Asteroid event. The last asteroid to impact earth was "2008TC3" which was detected on 7 October 2008, just 19 hours before it burned up in the atmosphere over northern Sudan.
A lager asteroid is due to buzz the Earth on November 8 this year. Near-Earth asteroid 2005YU55, which is around 400 meters across, will pass within 0.85 lunar distances from the Earth.
NASA says it poses no threat of an Earth collision for at least 100 years. However, it will be the closest yet approach by an object this large that we know about in advance. Nothing comparable will happen again until 2028 when asteroid (153814) 2001 WN5 will pass within 0.6 lunar distances of the Earth.
Showing posts with label earth. Show all posts
Showing posts with label earth. Show all posts
Monday, June 27, 2011
Monday, May 30, 2011
Earth getting 50 C degrees (122 F) hotter in a week
It has all started on May 21st, when lightening stroke not far from a house in Caransebes, Romania. The floor in only one room of the house started to get hotter and hotter in time and the owner had to eventually move all his belongings to avoid burning them. No other plots of land in the area get hotter, not even the very spot directly hit by lightening.
As a precautionary measure the tenant of the house was eventually evicted by authorities from that building when the floor reached a temperature of more than 60 C degrees (140 F) this weekend. Temperature continued to rise to 66 C degree now (150 F).
The strange phenomenon has no clear explanation so far. The gas company sent specialists at the scene and confirmed that they have no pipes there and no other energy networks are in place. Electricity cables are also far from the hot place and no other underground installations exist. Heat emanates from a two square meter (21.5 sq. ft) spot of the floor and an increased electric field with no specific cause was detected even two meters above the floor by the electricity company specialists called by the amazed mayor also present there. The electric field is similar to the one usually forming inside high tension transformer stations. The house built some 20 years ago on a plot of land formerly used by a construction site at the outskirts of the city and seems to have important quantities of scrap iron buried underneath.
A small hole was dug by the specialists in the hot floor of the room only to discover that temperature is rising sharply as the depth grows. Next to the usual paranormal explanations, some tried to give scientific reasons to the phenomenon suggesting the existence of a strongly ascending thermal water spring in the area, a possible ignition of an unknown natural deposit of coal beneath the house or even saying that magma was pushed nearer to the earth crust by the huge energy of the lightening that stroke the near-by area. The Caransebes area of Romania is a tectonic zone but no similar situations were previously reported.
As a precautionary measure the tenant of the house was eventually evicted by authorities from that building when the floor reached a temperature of more than 60 C degrees (140 F) this weekend. Temperature continued to rise to 66 C degree now (150 F).
The strange phenomenon has no clear explanation so far. The gas company sent specialists at the scene and confirmed that they have no pipes there and no other energy networks are in place. Electricity cables are also far from the hot place and no other underground installations exist. Heat emanates from a two square meter (21.5 sq. ft) spot of the floor and an increased electric field with no specific cause was detected even two meters above the floor by the electricity company specialists called by the amazed mayor also present there. The electric field is similar to the one usually forming inside high tension transformer stations. The house built some 20 years ago on a plot of land formerly used by a construction site at the outskirts of the city and seems to have important quantities of scrap iron buried underneath.
A small hole was dug by the specialists in the hot floor of the room only to discover that temperature is rising sharply as the depth grows. Next to the usual paranormal explanations, some tried to give scientific reasons to the phenomenon suggesting the existence of a strongly ascending thermal water spring in the area, a possible ignition of an unknown natural deposit of coal beneath the house or even saying that magma was pushed nearer to the earth crust by the huge energy of the lightening that stroke the near-by area. The Caransebes area of Romania is a tectonic zone but no similar situations were previously reported.
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