Astronomers Catch Asteroid In Near-Miss Video 120
ananyo writes in with a story about an asteroid near miss and a neat video taken by researchers. "It may look like a blurry blob, but researchers using the InfraRed Telescope Facility (IRTF) in Hawaii have posted a video of 2012 KT42 — a small asteroid that zipped past Earth at a distance of just three Earth radii on 29 May — the sixth closest encounter of any known asteroid. The bright asteroid appears fixed, while background stars zip past but in fact the asteroid is zipping along at 17 kilometres per second. 'You get the view of riding along with it,' says planetary scientist Richard Binzel of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, who led the observations. At its closest, the asteroid was at a distance between the orbit of the space station (about 1 Earth radii) and geosynchronous satellites (about 6 Earth radii)."
Space station altitude.... (Score:5, Informative)
Space station altitude is no where near 1 earth radius!!
Re:Space station altitude.... (Score:5, Informative)
Ahem... if you're at ground level, your own altitude is 1 earth radius.
Re:Space station altitude.... (Score:4, Informative)
No, then my altitude is zero as is my distance to the earth.
Do not confuse altitude with the distance to the center of the earth.
1 Earth radii (Score:5, Informative)
1 kilometer, 1 liter, 1 metric fuckton. Or as people use across the pond, 1 miles, 1 gallon, 1 imperial fuckton.
You don't say 1 kilometers, 1 liters and you don't say 1 radii either.
Hence, it's 1 radius.
Re:Space station altitude.... (Score:3, Informative)
360km pretty much is when compared to 36,000km.
360km (actually more like 400) is pretty little compared with earth's radius of over 6'000 kilometres
Near miss? Near hit, rather.... (Score:3, Informative)
Near miss? Near hit, rather....
Re:Units and news (Score:4, Informative)
They use "non-standard units" to give the reader a mental picture of the near miss. It has nothing to do with perceived stupidity.
Re:Units and news (Score:5, Informative)
Speaking of which, how much would 17km/s be in Sheppeis per Tatum grid? Good old "units" doesn't know either of those units.
Sheppey: A measure of distance equal to about 78 of a mile (1.4 km), defined as the closest distance at which sheep remain picturesque.
Tatum Grid [mit.edu]: the lowest regular pulse train that a listener intuitively infers from the timing of perceived musical events.
Downloadable video (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Units and news (Score:5, Informative)
Many sites [spaceweather.com] that report on PHAs (Potentially Hazardous Asteroids) use LD, meaning Lunar Distance. That's pretty descriptive to the general public - "Wow that thing flew right between Earth and the Moon!". According to their archive, KT42 missed Earth by 0.05 LD and was #6 on the all-time closest flyby list [blogspot.com].
At ground level your altitude is zero. (Score:5, Informative)
And the space station is some *20 times* closer to Earth than an earth radius. I must say I stopped reading here too.
Re:Space station altitude.... (Score:3, Informative)