Newly Discovered Asteroid to Pass Close to Earth Tonight (nytimes.com) 19
A small asteroid is flying very close to Earth on Thursday night, less than a week after astronomers discovered the object. The New York Times reports: The asteroid, named 2023 BU, was scheduled to pass over the southern tip of South America at 7:27 p.m. Eastern time. The asteroid is fairly small -- less than 30 feet across, about the size of a truck -- and will be best visible in the skies to the west of southern Chile. For space watchers unable to view 2023 BU firsthand, the Virtual Telescope Project will be broadcasting the event on its website and YouTube channel. The asteroid will not hit Earth but will make one of the closest approaches ever by such an object, hurtling past Earth at just 2,200 miles above its surface, according to a news release from the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. This encounter puts the asteroid "well within the orbit of geosynchronous satellites," the statement noted, but the asteroid is not on track to hit any.
2023 BU was unknown to NASA, or anyone, until last Saturday. Gennadiy Borisov, an amateur astronomer in Crimea, noticed the asteroid from the MARGO Observatory, a setup of telescopes that he has used to discover other interstellar objects. Astronomers then determined 2023 BU's orbit around the sun and impending trip past Earth using data from the Minor Planet Center, a project sanctioned by the International Astronomical Union. It publishes positions of newly found space objects, including comets and satellites, from information of several observatories worldwide.
2023 BU was unknown to NASA, or anyone, until last Saturday. Gennadiy Borisov, an amateur astronomer in Crimea, noticed the asteroid from the MARGO Observatory, a setup of telescopes that he has used to discover other interstellar objects. Astronomers then determined 2023 BU's orbit around the sun and impending trip past Earth using data from the Minor Planet Center, a project sanctioned by the International Astronomical Union. It publishes positions of newly found space objects, including comets and satellites, from information of several observatories worldwide.
Not uncommon (Score:5, Informative)
[NASA's] Dr. Farnocchia noted that a genuinely hazardous asteroid would be both larger and brighter than 2023 BU and so would be spotted much farther in advance of its arrival. He added that objects much smaller than 2023 BU pass close to Earth with some regularity.
“This case might seem exceptional, but in fact, objects of a similar size come this close to Earth about once a year on average,” he said. “So this is not an exceptional event. It’s not an everyday event, but it’s something that happens regularly.”
Re: (Score:1)
30m asteroid isn't hazardous... unless it happens to hit your city.
That seems hazardous.
As far as bigger asteroid are concerned, no, sorry mister scientist. Bigger doesn't guarantee brighter. It matters what the thing is made from.
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"30m asteroid isn't hazardous... unless it happens to hit your city."
TFS says 30 Ft, so its even less hazardous
TFS also says "Gennadiy Borisov, an amateur astronomer in Crimea,"
He's likely to see other UFOs in that part of the world
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My error. I misread as meters, not feet. Anyway, you still don't want that hitting your city.
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And of course, while most people live in cities, they still only cover a few percent of the planet's surface. So it actually hitting any city are fairly slender. Even the Chelyabinsk impactor actually landed some 10s of km west of the urban district - it was the shock wave that did the (minor) damage.
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You don't want a bullet to hit you, and that's even smaller. It's a bit of a alarmist thing to say.
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Are you saying the smaller meteor is no big deal? Unclear to me from your brief statement What you're saying here.
The Russian meteor flattened shit for miles. Even if we say this one is 1/4 weight and 1/2 the speed and therefore (naive math) does 1/8 the radius damage that's still devastating in a populated area.
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A car driving 100 mph is not hazardous to you. Unless it hits you. It is the "it hits you" that poses the risk. And that risk is small. Be it cars hitting you or meteors hitting you. It just is.
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Oh yeah, of course. 100%.
Car damage is whatever is directly in front of it, a small meteor might destroy 20 square blocks, Tunguska we know could wipe out a huge city, and the dinosaurs would like to add to this thread but oh well, they didn't have a huge ass asteroid defense in place.
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"The Russian meteor flattened shit for miles." I believe you're thinking of the Tunguska meteor (1908). The Chelyabinsk meteor did relatively minor damage, mostly broken glass (albeit over a wide area).
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Yes I clarified that later.
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With at least a decade of "comet hunting" astronomical work, discovering 9 comets, several near-earth objects (including this one), and the second (so far) interstellar object, the odds of him [wikipedia.org] correctly identifying anything he sees are reasonably good. That includes "aircraft, uninteresting".
To my slight surprise, he's from the same city as my wife. Couple of years older though, so it's
Re: You Ever Wonder (Score:2)
Already came and went (Score:2)
Slashdot story came down the pike slower than the asteroid.