Newly Found Asteroid To Fly Between Earth and Moon On September 18th

reply to post by new_here


It's not just you. There have been far too many meteors the past year or so. I've seen a few.

It isn't very comforting to know they only spot these objects a few days in advance. Some authority out there should be aware of what's incoming.



Thanks for posting this

reply to post by violet


But these objects are only a few meters in diameter. It's easy to get disconcerted and engage in confirmation bias, but the truth is that these objects have always been around and have always been impacting earth. There isn't more of meteors than, say, 20 or 30 years ago. There are simply better measures and iniciatives to spot them and to report them.

Stony asteroids with a diameter of 4 meters (13 ft) impact Earth approximately once per year. Asteroids with a diameter of 7 meters enter Earth's atmosphere with as much kinetic energy as Little Boy (the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, approximately 16 kilotons of TNT) about every 5 years, but the air burst only generates a much reduced 5 kilotons of TNT. These ordinarily explode in the upper atmosphere, and most or all of the solids are vaporized. en.wikipedia.org...

Here's an interesting simulation: a 4-meter asteroid composed of dense rock strikes the atmosphere at 17 km/s. It would explode at 40 km above sea level with the force of 0.75 kt. Some fragments may reach the ground, but the airburst is so high up and so weak that you wouldn't hear the blast on the ground. impact.ese.ic.ac.uk...

There isn't more of meteors than, say, 20 or 30 years ago. There are simply better measures and iniciatives to spot them and to report them.

reply to post by wildespace


How on Earth do you know your first sentence is true, if your second sentence is true? You're basically saying they 'probably' missed a bunch because the detection wasn't as good as it is now. Okay. How many did they miss? Can't say? Then you can't say there has been no increase. But thanks for towing the party line! I reckon somebody has to do it!

new_here

There isn't more of meteors than, say, 20 or 30 years ago. There are simply better measures and iniciatives to spot them and to report them.

reply to post by wildespace

 

How on Earth do you know your first sentence is true, if your second sentence is true? You're basically saying they 'probably' missed a bunch because the detection wasn't as good as it is now. Okay. How many did they miss? Can't say? Then you can't say there has been no increase. But thanks for towing the party line! I reckon somebody has to do it!

Don't you think it would be highly coincidental if the exact moment that we begin to use better equipment and spend more time/money/effort in looking for asteroids that more asteroids suddenly start coming at Earth?

Humans have been around a long time and experiencing meteors, comets, and such for a long time, and it would be odd if asteroids picked that moment (the moment we REALLY started looking for them) to suddenly increase in number.

That would be like thinking bacteria did not exist before the invention of the microscope.

Seems asteroids have been hitting earth since the beginning. It is not such a stretch to imagine one happening that will cause widespread death and destruction in our lifetime. The statistics are pretty accurate from the start of scientific observations, so since there is no telling when that will happen, we will just move forward cataloging and waiting.

I appreciated last year when NASA opened up the respectability of Amateur Astronomers to come on board, that was when traffic began to get to heavy for their personnel alone.

Just as we cannot live our lives wondering when we will be in a deadly car crash, statistics and all, we cannot afford to be insulated from the reality of a meteor strike either.

Surely the EM cloud our solar system has entered recently, and that will take a few thousand years to cross, has some matter in it. Like asteroids or even comets.

I can see an increase of bolids around the earth because of that cloud.

reply to post by wildespace

hmm seemed to miss this one though
(HD) Russia Meteor Impact 2013 - Meteor Strike Fireball Documentary


Love and harmony
Whateva

reply to post by Whateva69


So powerful, so beautiful... Are they guided by a mystic energy? why do they always land somewhere remote?

Here is some more info regarding the asteroid, updated by space.com

Even if it were aimed directly at our planet, the newly discovered space rock is so small that it would likely burn up in the atmosphere before it could hit the ground.

By observing the asteroid over several days, researchers pieced together its trajectory. They also put together an animation of asteroid 2013 RZ53's path, showing that it comes relatively close to Earth's orbit.

The space rock belongs to the Apollo family of near-Earth asteroids — the same group from which the meteor that exploded over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk in February 2013 is thought to have originated. The Russian meteor was much larger than the newly discovered asteroid, estimated to have been about 56 to 66 feet wide (17 to 20 m) before it exploded.

The discovery of 2013 RZ53 was made by researchers with the Mount Lemmon Survey at the University of Arizona. The project is part of a larger, NASA-sponsored program called the Catalina Sky Survey, which scans the cosmos for potentially dangerous asteroids.

link

new_here

There isn't more of meteors than, say, 20 or 30 years ago. There are simply better measures and iniciatives to spot them and to report them.

reply to post by wildespace

 

How on Earth do you know your first sentence is true, if your second sentence is true? You're basically saying they 'probably' missed a bunch because the detection wasn't as good as it is now. Okay. How many did they miss? Can't say? Then you can't say there has been no increase. But thanks for towing the party line! I reckon somebody has to do it!

It's called the Optics and Common Sense.

Prior to 1600, most astronomy was based upon eye sight only. Our eyes simply do not have the resolving power, nor the ability to see faint light very well.

Galileo started using the first primitive telescope to view the heavens, he made many discoveries, all simply because he suddenly had an piece of equipment that could allow him to see what his eyes only could not. He discovered the 4 largest moons around Jupiter, something that you can not see with your eyes alone.

Today we know of 67 moons in orbit around Jupiter. As optics got better and better, so did detection of the much smaller moons. Then as we sent probes out to Jupiter, we discovered even more that our optics here on Earth can't see.
Did the increase in Jupiter's moons mean that suddenly moons were popping into existence? Ludicrous! The answer of course is no. Our ability to detect moons that were smaller and smaller increased. It's still possible for Jupiter to capture small asteroids that end up becoming moons, but we know if that happens because their orbits will be highly eccentric at first.

The same thing happened with Giovanni Cassini. As he was studying Saturn and it's moons in 1671, he discovered Iapetus. However over time as he observed it with his telescope that he had then, it seemed to disappear when ever it got to the other side of Saturn, then reappear again.
In 1705, Cassini got a much better telescope than he had, and with it, he was able to see that Iapetus was not disappearing, but was dimming then getting brighter. Today we know that Iapetus has one side covered in water ice, making it very bright, and the other side covered in dark material so it reflects a lot less ice.
This is a perfect example of how better equipment allowed us to see something better. It also shows common sense, as Cassini deduced before he got the new telescope that the moon was still there, it was just getting dimmer to where his old telescope couldn't see it, and that it must mean that Iapetus was half covered with something bright, and half covered with something dark. Common Sense prevails.

When new asteroids are discovered, they are tracked. This allows us to calculate their orbit around the sun. The longer we observe them, the more refined that orbit becomes. None of them are something "new" that have invade our solar system. If they were, their orbits would by highly eccentric hyperbolic, like a comet. Things coming from outside our solar system do not just whip in and place themselves into a "parking orbit" around the sun. Objects that have a much more stable orbit around the sun means they have been there since the beginning or for a very, very, very long time since any new object will start out with that highly eccentric orbit and (if it's lucky and flung out again) takes a long time for that orbit to change into one that is less eccentric.

Prior to the Hubble Telescope, the best image that anyone could get of the asteroid 4 Vesta, the 2nd largest asteroid in the solar system at 326 miles wide, was a picture of a dot. That was it.
Hubble was able to give us a better image of it finally:



But we were not able to see any details until the NASA space craft Dawn visited it and return images from up close:


Right now Dawn is on it's way to Ceres, the largest asteroid in the solar system at 590 miles wide. And again, prior to Hubble, the best earth based telescope could make out was a large dot. But even with Hubble, this is all we can see until Dawn get's there:



Progress in technology, more people using that technology, and common sense tells us that there isn't an increase in asteroids. We're simply getting better at detecting them.

new_here
reply to post by Lady_Tuatha

 

Is it just me, or are these things (asteroids, comets, fireballs) popping up 'out of nowhere' these days with increasing frequency, with little or no warning. Sheesh! Thanks to the University that spotted this. No thanks to NASA for spending gazzillions sending probes all over the place, yet failing to position just one at a distance, Earth-facing, to keep an eye out for 'In-Coming!!!" Not Helpful!

Its just you..

behold.....you would be surprised how often we get hit, its just everyone has a camera and more are aware.. from my previous thread...

reply to post by antar


By watching the Documentary it looks like that one was dancing in the dark, bumping and grinding and waltzing round and round until it got bumped out of the ball room.

It came from the asteroid belt between mars and Jupiter, its explained @ 33.50 in the video.

Love and harmony
Whateva

reply to post by Quantum_Squirrel


Fine. How many did we not see, when we couldn't see them? Oh, that's right- you don't know.

Fact: We see more.
Fact: Our ability to see more is better.
Conclusion Conjecture: There are no more or less than usual.

(conjecture |kənˈjekCHər| noun
an opinion or conclusion formed on the basis of incomplete information.)

Tell me I am wrong here.

Back on topic of this asteroid, here's what Leonid Elenin posts on his Facebook:

Very interesting near-Earth asteroid - 2013 RZ53, has a very small relative velocity to the Earth ... 1.5-2 km/sec. Most likely man-made object or impact lunar ejecta from the surface of the Moon ... Size about few meters. If the object is natural, it's an excellent target for the mission to capture it.

As incredible as it may sound, it indeed can turn out to be a spent rocket stage or something like that. Such objects have been spotted before and initially thought to be asteroids.

I'm sure that, if you looked at its animated trajectory, you couldn't help but notice that it practically follows our planet, like a cat.

wildespace
Back on topic of this asteroid, here's what Leonid Elenin posts on his Facebook:

Very interesting near-Earth asteroid - 2013 RZ53, has a very small relative velocity to the Earth ... 1.5-2 km/sec. Most likely man-made object or impact lunar ejecta from the surface of the Moon ... Size about few meters. If the object is natural, it's an excellent target for the mission to capture it.

As incredible as it may sound, it indeed can turn out to be a spent rocket stage or something like that. Such objects have been spotted before and initially thought to be asteroids.

I'm sure that, if you looked at its animated trajectory, you couldn't help but notice that it practically follows our planet, like a cat.

Well that's interesting! If it's a 'man-made object' I wonder what would cause it to suddenly pass between the Earth and Moon after 'following our planet like a cat.' Did it accelerate?

Also, what is an 'impact lunar ejecta' ? Is this a natural object that hit the Moon and richoched off like a pinball?

wildespace
Back on topic of this asteroid, here's what Leonid Elenin posts on his Facebook:

Very interesting near-Earth asteroid - 2013 RZ53, has a very small relative velocity to the Earth ... 1.5-2 km/sec. Most likely man-made object or impact lunar ejecta from the surface of the Moon ... Size about few meters. If the object is natural, it's an excellent target for the mission to capture it.

As incredible as it may sound, it indeed can turn out to be a spent rocket stage or something like that. Such objects have been spotted before and initially thought to be asteroids.

I'm sure that, if you looked at its animated trajectory, you couldn't help but notice that it practically follows our planet, like a cat.

nice info, thanks

I never even assumed that it may be space junk, and well yeah there is quite a lot of that about.

Although I would much prefer this -

reply to post by new_here


Well, it doesn't always follow behind. Rather, it slowly catches up with us, then goes ahead, then slows down and falls behind, then catches up again. It's a quasi-satellite of Earth.

It travels a bit like in this video, except imagine the Earth in the middle of the "loop":

Soylent Green Is People
reply to post by Baddogma

 

Many of the fireballs being reported lately have been seen on security cameras and web-cams, which have become more ubiquitous over the past few years. More cameras = more opportunities for sightings.

Obviously the Russian airburst last year was exceptional, and would have been noticed whether or not we had a lot of webcams/security cams, but that may be a relatively isolated event.

I remember being in Canada around 1996, sitting at the shopping mall bus stop on a Saturday and waiting for a bus. Looking at the gap between two buildings I saw a brilliant blue-white fireball shooting down, almost hearing it in my mind. Looking around the car park, everyone was just busy parking, loading their groceries or driving off.

Another thing to do is just go outside on a Summer night and watch the stars. It's a bonus if you can see our galaxy, but look long enough and you'll see satellites traveling across the sky as well as shooting stars. When we took out along a long/short wave radio, and we could hear the satellites chirping away as they went overhead.
Combined with the rumbling traffic of the distant freeway, it made the galaxy seem a very busy place. I could just imagine space-truckers just travelling from star to star.

reply to post by eriktheawful


Dawn looks more like a roaming Moon. Seems to be a perect circle. Nice images. Very interesting. ~$heopleNation

When you think about the fact that the dinosaurs existed untouched for 150 million years, it isn't hard to imagine that "the big one" or an ELE event might be a very seldom occurrence.