Asteroid 25143 Itokawa Getting Close

I was looking for scheduled meteor showers for June and I came across an orbit diagram from NASA can be found here

neo.jpl.nasa.gov...

Around the end of June is when it comes the closest June 29 it is 0.015 Astronomical Units away and if i did my math correctly thats 1,394,337.1118915532 miles

Infact, according to this site,

newton.dm.unipi.it...:Itokawa;main

It will be the closest this month for atleast the next 70 years.

Maybe this is where Aussie Bloke got his idea?

And, Is that a good distance for observing with a 6" Telescope? It's diamater is only 0.36 KM....

If I'm not mistaken, that would put it about 5.5 times further away from us than the moon. Given all the asteroid predictions, a.k.a. hoax threads, I'll just wait and read about the one that real science, not speculation or psychic prediction, indicates is on a head on course for Michigan.

5.5 miles from the new moon... Hmmm well I guess it would be easy to devise up some theory from that


Lets see....

Moons gravity sucks in the asteroid... Asteroid crashes into moon at the force of hundreds of nuclear weapons.... Pieces of the asteroid and the moon fly off into space heading straight to earth....

Originally posted by CommonSense
If I'm not mistaken, that would put it about 5.5 times further away from us than the moon.

Yeah, that isn't so close.

2002NY40 passed earth from distance 500 000 kms (moon's average distance is 385 000 kms)
Its movement showed very nicely in couple of seconds.

lol oops 5.5 times further... I thought you said 5.5 miles

[edit on 12-6-2004 by Thatoneguy]

5.5 miles from the new moon...

He said 5.5 times further away from us than the moon...

holy geez i even called it a "new" moon...

newton.dm.unipi.it...:Itokawa;main


Asteroid 25143 Itokawa(1998 SF36) is 0.36km(0.224miles) in diameter. It will be closest to earth June 26/27 2004. The distance to Earth at this date will be 0.0129AU; that is 1,929,812km(1,198,640miles) to Earth.

[edit on 12-6-2004 by lostinspace]