Asteroid approaching earth

According to NASA an object of 190 by 440 mtrs is closing in on our planet. The object, presumably an asteroid, was discovered in November. On 11 and 12 December it will be flying parallel to the earth. There have been UFO-sightings in the past preceding a disaster or other event!!

I hope this baby won't hit my country

neo.jpl.nasa.gov...



[Edited on 10-12-2003 by Olafski]

Give us a link! This sounds like a cool story!

Fyi, I've found this topic on a dutch weblog. Here's the NASA-url...

neo.jpl.nasa.gov...

Hey we were talking about that in an old topic about Mars being close. And we were viewing that same applet. I forgot about that.

Wow.....
On sat night around 9pm I saw a huge fire ball shoot across the sky heading E-NE before it dissappeared behind some rooftops.
It was blue green when I saw it and left a smoke trail that was lit by the moon.
Pretty cool
Wonder if it is part of the same rock?

Hmmm. This may be what Stan Romanek was given a vision of.

Originally posted by heelstone
Hmmm. This may be what Stan Romanek was given a vision of.

That thought crossed my mind too.
Why are we not seeing this anywhere else?

Wow, that bugger is gonna be close!! Within .044 AU!

That still puts it, at it's closest point, at almost 4-5 million kilometers from Earth (depending on day)... I realize it isn't that far astronomically....but I'm not running for the bunker just yet...

[Edited on 10-12-2003 by Gazrok]

where will it be visable??

would it be visable in australia and at approximatly what time will it be visable (in us time, then i can work out what time it would be in aus)

i might borrow my parents video camera if it's gonna be highly visable

Why are we not seeing this anywhere else?

if there was an astronaut heading for earthi dont think we would hear about it until it hit, because by then nobody could do anything irrational. things like this in a way are better kept out of the publics eye. those who are interested will find out about it, and those who dont want to know wont.

I have no idea.. Ask your nearest newspaper or tv station...

I doubt it will even be visible. There was a large asteroid which passed earth within the orbit of the moon, and it wasn't even detected until it was on it's way out.

Asteroids are really hard to see, because they tend to absorb light, not reflect them. The only ones we see are the ones which come into earth's atmosphere, and .044 AU is far from earth's atmosphere. So it sounds like there will be no visuals, unless it turns out to be some highly reflective material. Like gold. Imagine how quickly the space programs of every nation would grow if that happened!

It will actually be 0.025 AU on the 12th & 13th.

How many AUs is the Moon away from Earth? THe closest this thing is supposed to get is .025 AUs, im pretty sure that is much further than our Moon.

The moon is aproximatly 384,500 km from earth, which equates to .002 AU. Something tells me we might be ok... After all, this asteroid is going to pass at about 4.8 km from earth.

Originally posted by heelstone
Hmmm. This may be what Stan Romanek was given a vision of.

aah, Stan Romanek. Now there's a guy that has seen some crazy #. And he has video of it.
Does he still live in the Denver area?

so its not a alien invasion or a giant tidalwave, but a asteroid?

Originally posted by jrod
How many AUs is the Moon away from Earth? THe closest this thing is supposed to get is .025 AUs, im pretty sure that is much further than our Moon.

1 AU = 149,597,870.691 kilometers

Definition: An Astronomical Unit is the mean distance between the Earth and the Sun. It is a derived constant and used to indicate distances within a solar system. The Earth orbits at a distance of 1 AU from the Sun.

Technical Definition: AU is short for Astronomical Unit and defined as: the radius of a Keplerian circular orbit of a point-mass having an orbital period of 2*(pi)/k days (k is the Gaussian gravitational constant). Since an AU is based on radius of a circular orbit, one AU is actually slightly less than the average distance between the Earth and the Sun (approximately 150 million km or 93 million miles).

Historical Background: Tycho Brahe estimated the distance between the Sun and the Earth at 8 million kilometers (5 million miles). Later, Johannes Kepler estimated the AU was at 24 million kilometers (15 million miles). In 1672, Giovanni Cassini made a much better estimate by using Mars. By observing Mars from Paris and having a colleague, Jean Richer, also observe Mars at the same time in French Guiana in South America, Cassini determined the parallax of Mars. From that Cassini was able to calculate the distance from Earth to Mars, and then the distance from Earth to the Sun. Cassini calculated the AU to be at 140 million kilometers (87 million miles), which is lower, but very close to the modern day number.

neo.jpl.nasa.gov...

From Earth to the moon is 0.003 AU

It appears today is it's point of closest approach to earth...but it is still over 2,000,000 miles away.