27-megaton Asteroid Apophis to fly by Earth tonight

Originally posted by CALGARIAN

Not that you'll be able to see it as it goes by, but there's a massive asteroid flying past the Earth tonight, named 99942 Apophis.

ca.news.yahoo.com...

One in 229,000 chance of hitting, but even larger chance in 2029.

Why do they only tell us a few hours before? LOL. Attention spam of the reader, I presume.

Tonight? Apophis is supposed to fly by on February 15th.
Are we talking about the same asteroid?
www.virtualtelescope.eu...


PS. It probably is another asteroid. Anyway, the February 15th is the interesting one.

reply to post by AdAstra


The close-approach on February 15th is 2012 DA14, and it's interesting because it's the closest approach on record -- no closer than 21,000 km from the surface.

This fly-by of Apophis is interesting because it is providing data useful for further eliminating its risk of impact in 2029 and 2036.

reply to post by ngchunter


Yeah, slooh is the site I'm talking about. One could view it there though, right?

Originally posted by Manhater
reply to post by ngchunter

 

Yeah, slooh is the site I'm talking about. One could view it there though, right?

Assuming clear weather, yes. iTelescope.net's observatories had bad weather last night.

reply to post by CALGARIAN


I told my neighbor about this. He said, " Dude, you don't think it will hit my plants do you ? "