At first glance i thought it was an old SOHO image from the zetatalk days when that website had a lot of hype, but check out the date, its from july/aug,
now that makes it interesting.. what part of the sky is L1?
doesn't SOHO use some other type of vision other than visible light.. otherwise i'd check it out with my telescope (if it was in the northern hemisphere)

Okay, call me stupid but is it remaining fairly stationary in the sky? does that denote it is coming straight at us, or will pass very near? I'm not too knowledgeable on such things.

Is Toutatis close enough right now to appear that large?

Tiza

SpittinCobra:

Thanks for the info, but it can't be Toutatis.

Toutatis is on the other side of earth.

SWAN/SOHO is located 1.5 million km's from earth - in the direction of the Sun - on the L1...so the object is somewhere around 1.5 million km's (plus or minus a few hundred thousand) from earth.

Cheers to others for any other info as well.


JS

Hi, Jumpspace:

Is there a place where we can contact someone there to ask them?

Thanks,
Tiza

Good, Jumpspace. Please let us know what you find out.
Thanks,
Tisa

Whoa check this out Asteroid 4179 Toutatis (1989 AC) comes within 0.22 AU on November 3rd and 0.4 AU on December 14th and right now its 276 AU and the next couple of weeks its going to get closer and closer then back off abit then it gets close on these dates i mention....is this the object do you think?

Originally posted by markjaxson
Whoa check this out Asteroid 4179 Toutatis (1989 AC) comes within 0.22 AU on November 3rd and 0.4 AU on December 14th and right now its 276 AU and the next couple of weeks its going to get closer and closer then back off abit then it gets close on these dates i mention....is this the object do you think?

Mark,
I think that Jumpspace said that it's on the other side of earth right now or something, so this isn't Toutatis. I also think that Toutatis is supposed to be the closest on Sept. 29th, 2004, but it could have changed. I haven't checked it in a while now.

Tiza