Newly discovered - Incoming Asteroid VM 2008 Will it hit Earth Today?

Just discovered asteroid VM 2008. Looks to intersect with earth sometime today. I'm not much of a space whiz anyone have more info.


Incoming Asteroid VM 2008

how big is it

i cannot tell by link provided

That's a good question...I really don't know. need the space experts in on this.

2 to 3 metres

0.1LD so small chance of skimming or burning in the Atmos.

Pretty light show for a second.

Wonder when it is - I'd like to be watching if it does burn up in atmosphere.
I used to have links to all those kinda pages but after a couple crashes don't any more.

Wow didn't know it was so small. Wonder how big the one I saw hit the ground was to make it all the way to earth. It paralled our car and exploded into several small red glowing chunks proly no bigger than 4-5 inches each.

reply to post by TH3ON3


Cool,I'd love to have seen that.

The biggest I saw was in Scotland.Like a magnesium bright flare crossing the sky in 2 seconds.

It looked like it was going to hit...but it didn't...and I was sad...

2008-Nov-03 22:29 ± 00:03

That time is UTC or GMT

Near Earth Orbits

So it is or isn't going to enter our atmosphere? When exactly does it enter in US time. Anyone?

Beats me. But it's pretty worrying when they only discover these with a couple of hours beforehand.

If this one is 3m does that mean they'd only discover a 30 metre one in a few days warning.. or a 300 metre one in a couple of weeks

Just kidding..

Someone said it enters around 12 midnight. Size up to 15 feet in diam. Should make for a really good light show.

reply to post by TH3ON3


Should be about the same effect as the one that came down a couple of weeks ago over Sudan. Bout a kiloton of TNT way high up.

Unless it's solid iron core then it'd make quite a decent size hole or splash somewhere.

Hey, maybe it's Superman on his way here in his spiky egg thing..Just in time to vote in the US elections.

Originally posted by AGENT_T
Beats me. But it's pretty worrying when they only discover these with a couple of hours beforehand.

Well considering it's still magnitude 26.9 despite being right on top of us, I think it's pretty impressive they spotted it at all. Something that small would easily go unnoticed to most people even if it were in a stable low earth orbit.

reply to post by ngchunter


Hey NGchunter, any idea when it will light up or where the projected entrace will be?

Originally posted by AGENT_T
Beats me. But it's pretty worrying when they only discover these with a couple of hours beforehand.

If this one is 3m does that mean they'd only discover a 30 metre one in a few days warning.. or a 300 metre one in a couple of weeks

Just kidding..

I don't know my friend,

About the kidding, don't believe the hype, around 5-10 %of NEO are undiscovered of unknown size, out there.

We have only been looking properly for around a decade.

When Deep Impact the film that came out around a decade ago was aired, more was spent on the Special Effects of that film than had ever gone into tracking, predicting and correlating these objects.

Astronomy is getting there but we have not by a far stretch of the imagination passed the post or line yet.

Its still quite plausible for a 1/2 km rock to hit the earth with very little warning.

As we know from Hale Bop too comets are not easy to predict in their final approach and behaviour, and many of the orbits of the current NEO's or even not so Near EO's posiibles are only extrapolated from very scant observations.

We should all remember that Hubble cant see the Lunar rover on the moon, and look at how close that is.

The effects too of Chaos, or just long term interactions, a cm here, and 1 meter there on orbital paths, or gravity which still has an "Unknown" and observed (is its gravity that is?) on our satellites that science still can not explain, on the millions of bits of Rock hurtling round the sun.

This isn't one, but many have come close with little warning.

The earth will be hit again one day again by a significant one, its just timing.

Kind regards,

Elf.

[edit on 3-11-2008 by MischeviousElf]

reply to post by TH3ON3


From what I can tell, it will be travelling between the Earth/moon orbit.

Today's Traffic: There are seven objects known to be traveling within ten lunar distances (LD)1 of our planet today, November 4th. 2008 VM is an intruder inside the Earth-Moon system today. It is coming its closest to the Moon today on this passage, reaching 0.98 LD at 0002 UTC. 2008 VC is at 4.51-4.42 LD. It is coming its closest to Earth today on this passage, reaching 4.42 LD at 2001 UTC. 2008 UC202 is at 5.56-5.81 LD. 2008 UT95 is at 5.68-8.85 LD. 2008 UC7 is at 5.74-7.78 LD. 2008 TX3 is at 9.38-9.67 LD. And 2008 UA202 is at 9.39-9.98 LD.

No other objects are known to be coming in for a close approach to the Earth until late December.

There are eight objects that recently flew past Earth at less than ten LD and remain of continuing interest. See their details below.

This report was refreshed at 0012 UTC.

Looking for recent impactor 2008 TC3? See news links.

www.hohmanntransfer.com...

reply to post by TH3ON3


Asteroid (2008 VM) passed between 25,000mi and 27,000mi above Antarctica at 14:34 on November 3rd, 2008. It is only about 9 meters wide. It's next closest approach will come March 21, 2012 at 14:49 PST, but it will be over 4,000,000mi away. Then not again until 2029 or 2036...

Whew, it missed us. good.

Thanks for the link to the tracking site! Very interesting.(bookmarked)
I think it would be cool if they had an e-mail alert feature so close approaches could be sent
out to all subscribers.