Asteroid that flew past Earth today has moon.!?

"Asteroid 2004 BL86 passed Earth today at 16:19 UTC (11:19 a.m. EST). This "movie" of the asteroid was generated from our radar data. Twenty individual images were used. Radar observations allow scientists to better measure an asteroid's size, rotation and location. As a bonus, radar observations of 2004 BL86 detected a tiny moon orbiting the asteroid." www.nasa.gov...



What say you ATS? Thoughts? Feelings? Concerns? Theories? Conspiracies?

Maybe it's a spacecraft docking with it. Maybe the asteroid is really a ship too. Or maybe it's just a comet crossing paths with it.

Is this thing actually orbiting the asteroid or just heading toward it? Hard to tell with the looping in the video.

I read in the other thread on fireball predictions that asteroids travel with smaller chunks of debris/smaller asteroids, but this doesn't seem to be traveling with it.

Very interesting stuff.

I say it was Bruce Willis trying to relive his "Armageddon" days...

That, and that was a cool freakin' clip.

Since when are asteroids accompanied by moons?

Thats amazing!

Another one to the list of asteroids with moons...

The 1998 QE2 asteroid also had a moon, or maybe 2 moons.

May 30, 2013: Approaching asteroid 1998 QE2 has a moon.

ETA
Asteroids with Satellites

a reply to: TrueMessiah

Well, satellites. Most likely to have fractured off the main asteroid, which has a much larger mass so the small bit is attracted to it. Newton type stuff even works in space. It was supposedly visible with binoculars, but also live-streamed and available for watching a re-run now on this site. Slooh

a reply to: ~Lucidity

Since they are calling it a moon, the logical assumption is that it does orbit, instead of just trails along after it... not enough footage to tell... though it does appear to be closing distance on the comet, it could be in a sort of a vertically oriented "flat spin" making it just appear like it's coming in for a "docking". When I did engineering work and drew 3D objects and threw them into a 3DO (Three Dimensional Orbit) you'd see the same thing if it was orbiting towards the camera when both poles were almost 90 degrees between the viewer (me) and the objects on the monitor.

Edit to add: thinking about this more...

I wonder what orientation the "moon" spins in relation to the solar system. Of course this is where it gets fun... relativity wise, to us as a viewer... it was moving and in our normal sphere of thinking we're stationary... because we orbit in a pretty stable manner around the Sun. So on the comet as an observer of us... it is sitting still and we moved past it. When in reality we are being dragged through the universe by the sun, and that lil moon thing is being dragged through our solar system by the comet, there would have been a moment in space time, where we and it stood still if observing each other at the same time. Kinda like when you hear a car coming then there's the instant where it sounds like you are right beside it before going past then trailing off the same as it was coming. There's a term for that, and I can't for the life of me remember what it's called.

Maybe. The asteroid is spinning , so if it was a moon wouldn't it be tracking to that spin? Seems to me whatever it is is following more of a straight path.

a reply to: BigBrotherDarkness

You can bet your butt that they obtained more data that a couple of dozen radar returns.

Most people seem to be unwilling to accept that objects and things that happen in space are considered fairly secret until a judgment is made that they are either benign or can be explained conventually.

The recent revelation of the new WOW! signal found in Australian has followed the approximate time delay periods as when pulsars and quasars were found a few decades ago. At the discover of each, it was considered that they may be ET signals and the data was withheld for several months until they worked up reasonable interpretations for the signals.

originally posted by: ~Lucidity
Maybe it's a spacecraft docking with it. Maybe the asteroid is really a ship too. Or maybe it's just a comet crossing paths with it.

Is this thing actually orbiting the asteroid or just heading toward it? Hard to tell with the looping in the video.
Very interesting stuff.

Yes, I get what you say, this is the second recent looping gif I have seen in recent days, the other one was Ceres and it's bright spot, just as ambiguous too.

a reply to: Aliensun

That is a very logical assumption, based on how well the camera is oriented in relation to the comet.

Bump. No comments really, just really cool, and thanks for posting!

There's nothing to stop an asteroid or comet having orbiting objects. Everything with mass has to obey the laws of physics. So long as the velocity balances out the mutual forces of gravity. In theory you could have a scale model of the Earth/Moon system made from ball bearings if you got everything scaled down.

But it would be awesome if that moon was someone else's exploration satellite.

a reply to: ladyinwaiting

quite welcome, it's pretty neat almost like a mini solar system passing through ours... or we through it's... relatively speaking

a reply to: BigBrotherDarkness

Maybe it has little tiny people on it..

A scientist can probably confirm if it is physically possible and probable..

a reply to: nOraKat

it's quite possible is has a bacteria on it that was frozen in a sort of cryogenic sleep, from being out in deeper space temps and when it passes near heat or radiation, the "bacteria" for lack of a better word, either warm up and spread or mutate or both... and over the course of billions of years of; heating up and cooling down and being exposed to mutagenic radiation, that whatever possible bacteria it started out "as" could mutate into all sorts of things and become like a biological bullet... like a spermiogenesis that spreads life through the universe. If this "biological-bullet" were to strike a planet suitable for this bacteria to grow or get caught around a sun at the right orbital distance, and keep gaining mass to build into a planet... then life would have been on the planet at the start of it's formation and slowly evolved from space particulates adding material to it... it's also quite possible that both of these instances occur.

Perhaps all planets have this potential, and as they drift towards the systems sun they "awaken" when they are pulled into the habitable zone for life. If so perhaps, looking for a past civilization on Mars is not a good idea... but the one with the extremely poisonous atmosphere called Venus one planet closer to our sun... at our present technology we have an idea of how to colonize Mars and terraform it... not enough data to know if Venus is really where we came from as a first earth, and we are currently on "Mars" as one planet collides with the sun... it may not be that "Ancient Earthlings" were responsible for impossible structures but ancient "Venusians" but still "us" none the less... perhaps there was a catechism or something that occurred that caused us to lose the tech, or "help" from the original mother earthlings remaining behind, but still managed to save some of the writings?

If that is the case, then "Aliens" wouldn't have very far to travel at all to pay us a visit.

Science, when mixing in with known data, and unknown data for a complete picture in logic and rationality... can make for some really good logical fun and reasoning especially when using rationale, legend, history and superstitionalistic tales

superstitionalistic... yeah I know that's not a real word but I like it.

I think it's incredible that we can get such high-res radar "images" of an object just 500 meters across (and its tiny moon!) from millions of km away. If there were were a huge alien spaceship flying in the inner Solar System, astronomers would have picked it up.

And yes, lots of asteroids have one or more moons, some even have three!

I am slow.

Does this mean it is not really plausable to think we could seperate part of an asteroid and have it go off in another direction based on the direction the force pushes it? Will it just get caught up in the gravity of the rock? If so then why is there not more than just one piece in orbit with it? This thing could just grow on and on until it consumed all the matter in the universe?

How cool is this. From the orbit of the small "moon", I wonder if they can figure out if it was captured, or a small piece that broke off the parent, perhaps due to an impact. We are getting to see some real wonders of our solar system.

So the assteroid was mooning us? I thought that was a human trait.