YU55: Nasa releases short film of 'near miss' asteroid as it passed by Earth within moon's orbit

Nasa got this one right........again. But i was wondering how long before they get it wrong?? Would they inform the public about it?.

For those capable of grasping astronomical distances, this is what they would probably describe as a near miss.
An asteroid the size of an aircraft carrier yesterday whistled past Earth at a distance of 202,000 miles away – slightly nearer than the moon.
It is the largest such object to come so close in 35 years but the experts at Nasa remained relaxed, ruling out any chance of impact with the space rock known as 2005 YU55.

The last time a large cosmic interloper came that close to Earth was in 1976, and it won't happen again until 2028.
However, it was bad news for all but the most committed of stargazers. It was not visible to the naked eye - even at its closest point to Earth it was about 100 times dimmer than humans can observe naturally.


source: dailymail

6 frames?!? Really? It came so close but all they can produce is 6 frames of pixelated crap? FAIL!

Originally posted by ChaoticOrder
6 frames?!? Really? It came so close but all they can produce is 6 frames of pixelated crap? FAIL!

Actually, that movie was shot when it was still quite far away, a bit less than 4 times the distance from Earth to the Moon. They still have not yet released any pictures or video of it coming closer than that.

Pictures shot at 860,000 miles from Earth.
Moon Distance is about 239,000 miles.

Originally posted by ChaoticOrder
6 frames?!? Really? It came so close but all they can produce is 6 frames of pixelated crap? FAIL!

yeah i agree, was really hoping for some nice big hi-res stuff to use as wallpaper

oh well hopefully some will come out in the next few days.

May be it's just me....but that reminded me of those baby scans! Wasn't expecting it to look like that at all! I was thinking I was going to see a little black dot as it whizzed past the moon, hence the reason for the 6 frames. Oh well hey ho, Just like all the doom and gloom stuff this year, that was as exciting as a damp squeeb too!
Rainbows
Jane

Originally posted by Noobastronomer
Nasa got this one right........again. But i was wondering how long before they get it wrong?? Would they inform the public about it?.

Again the obsession with NASA, like its the only organisation in the whole entire world that has anything to do with space.
You think countries other than the USA are incapable of astronomy?????

The overwhelming vast majority of observations of asteroids and comets are done by amateurs. Not NASA.
The calculations of the orbits are done by the Minor Planet Center, not NASA. Amateurs at home are free to calculate their own estimated orbits of anything they see in the sky.

Originally posted by Noobastronomer
Nasa got this one right........again. But i was wondering how long before they get it wrong?? Would they inform the public about it?.

For those capable of grasping astronomical distances, this is what they would probably describe as a near miss.
An asteroid the size of an aircraft carrier yesterday whistled past Earth at a distance of 202,000 miles away – slightly nearer than the moon.
It is the largest such object to come so close in 35 years but the experts at Nasa remained relaxed, ruling out any chance of impact with the space rock known as 2005 YU55.

The last time a large cosmic interloper came that close to Earth was in 1976, and it won't happen again until 2028.
However, it was bad news for all but the most committed of stargazers. It was not visible to the naked eye - even at its closest point to Earth it was about 100 times dimmer than humans can observe naturally.


source: dailymail

NASA very vary vary vary rarely get it wrong these days the got best mathmaticians in the world with some of the best scientists in the world with some of the best computers in the world. For some reason some people on this board think of nasa as a few dudes sitting around when what they are is the pinicle of human race's endevour of science,maths and space

Maybe it did hit us and blasted us into an alternate reality where it didn't hit us

reply to post by angelchemuel


It's actually very similar to baby scans, that movie isn't photography, its radar astronomy, a technique of observing nearby astronomical objects by reflecting microwaves off target objects and analyzing the echoes.

Ultrasound scans, typical diagnostic sonographic scanners operate by sending sound frequencies and imaging the various frequencies that bounce back to form a spacial representation.

And Laser altimeters, referred to as LIDAR, uses laser light pulses and times the return of the light to represent distance differences, to image the surface altitude from a distance for 3D modeling, like radar astronomy only the range is much shorter than microwave echoes.

This image of a body 400-meters in diameter was over 800,000 miles away and has a resolution of about 7 feet per pixel. It must be understood how much this technology has advanced to image an area of 7-ft/pixel at those distances. No optical scope can come close to that not even Hubble, if Hubble was even able to track it, which it can't, thus a Hubble image would be a blurry dot about 2 pixels.

Did anyone film it yesterday as it passed?? I tried to look for it but I couldn't see anything!!!

reply to post by Firefly_


I doubt it hit Earth and blasted us into an alternate reality...I'm headed to my crappy job and in my alternate reality I'm living on a yacht surrounded by an infinite amount of women and I crap gold

Originally posted by FreedomKnight
Did anyone film it yesterday as it passed?? I tried to look for it but I couldn't see anything!!!

Or can anyone locate its current location as of now.

Originally posted by alfa1

Originally posted by Noobastronomer
Nasa got this one right........again. But i was wondering how long before they get it wrong?? Would they inform the public about it?.

Again the obsession with NASA, like its the only organisation in the whole entire world that has anything to do with space.
You think countries other than the USA are incapable of astronomy?????

The overwhelming vast majority of observations of asteroids and comets are done by amateurs. Not NASA.
The calculations of the orbits are done by the Minor Planet Center, not NASA. Amateurs at home are free to calculate their own estimated orbits of anything they see in the sky.

I understand the point your trying to make.. But lets be honest here..Most of the sources on this website are taken from NASA..

for eg: Say you find out about Comet that poses a threat to Earth....Wouldn't you be curious about what Nasa has to say?

reply to post by Noobastronomer


Maybe because people turn first to NASA built and financed websites that illustrate the data from the MPC operated by the IAU on a three year grant from NASA's budget instead of going to the data on the MPC sites. If the IAU is truly an international astronomical union the where is the international money at to operate the organization, which also collects data from amateur astronomers around the world, why does every international United Nation organization have to be financed by American tax payer's money?

If you don't like it start a private international company with Russian, European, Australian, Japanese, Indian, and Chinese money then.

The Minor Planet Center operates at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO), which is part of the Center for Astrophysics (CfA) along with the Harvard College Observatory (HCO).

reply to post by Illustronic


here is a short movie by Leonid Elenin as he tracked YU55 last night.

Originally posted by Noobastronomer
Nasa got this one right........again. But i was wondering how long before they get it wrong?? Would they inform the public about it?.

That, of course, is the ultimate source of all the conspiracy threads about imminent impacts, Would NASA tell us? I think is likely to be relatively minor (on a global scale) like YU55 would have been, then yes. If an ELE then no. If we're all going to die anyway, why spoil our final days?

Originally posted by Noobastronomer
for eg: Say you find out about Comet that poses a threat to Earth....Wouldn't you be curious about what Nasa has to say?

That doesn't mean I stop there. In fact, I wouldn't even necessarily start there. I'd do my own research, take a look at the comet's orbit using the MPC data, then take a look myself and see if it's following the predicted orbit. Elenin did, despite claims by fake amateur astronomers that it did not. In fact, time and time again, NASA has proven to be infinitely more trustworthy than fear mongers masquerading as astronomers on youtube. That doesn't mean I trust them blindly, I believe in the adage of "trust, but verify." I can, and do, the calculations myself. Funny how they always end up agreeing with NASA.