Bright Asteroid Visible Tonight

Ender, Duke_of_URL writes: "NASA is reporting that 1998 WT24, a near Earth asteroid, will be easily visible (9th magnitude) to telescopes in Auriga and Perseus. This NEO will be passing within 5 lunar distances to Earth, so there's no danger of collision."

Telescopes?

[Oily Tuna]

telescopes in Auriga and Perseus

Where are they? Greece?

Whoops!

[fm6]

This NEO will be passing within 5 lunar distances to Earth, so there's no danger of collision.

Sloppy English is all part of the Slashdot experience, but in this case it just won't do. "Five lunar distances" is only 0.015 AUs. The NEO people at JPL [nasa.gov] consider a collision possible if the rock is predicted to pass within 0.05 AUs. Of course that possibility is still very very small, but it ain't zero.

Re:Whoops!

[Anonymous Coward]

The "no danger of collision" quote comes from NASA [nasa.gov] as does the 0.05AU critereon on the same page.
Slashdot is blameless this time.

What are you smoking?

[Anonymous Coward]

The distance for a collision is by definition Earth's radius, which is 0.0166 lunar distances. The "twenty lunar distances" rule you're talking about is for long term probabilities of a collision over many many orbits.

Re:Whoops!

[PhuCknuT]

IIRC, that 0.05 AU is in regards to long term danger, not a danger on this orbit.

it came, i saw, it was neck breaking. + some links

[vikrant]

i caught it with 20x120 binocs .. i was observing from quite a light polluted place in new delhi on 16/12. it was very high in the sky and made the observation neck breaking!

It was really some experience .. first hunting that quickly moving rock at the limit of binocs reach and then watch it move w.r.t stars .. and to know that before 2027, next such event (bright NEO) will only happen in 2004. :-)

i have put my observation log and a plot of moving wt24 and stars here [geocities.com]. the log shows some of excitement i went through. not anything of scientific value though.

here [clpgh.org] are downloadable finder charts prepared using Guide 7.0 to make life a little easier.

here [theastronomer.org] is a MUST SEE mpeg video made by compiling the frames from a 2 hour CCD run on WT24 by Nick James [mailto]

here [nasa.gov] is great image showing 1 complete rotation of 1998 WT24

One word...

[darylp]

Praxis.

more info

[CowNutsMack]

here's some more info on it [alexchiu.com]