Asteroid 2007 TU24 has NASA concerned.

OK. For the optical telescope folks. Get your lens paper and clean the eye-piece cuz this one is dark. Look to Andromeda and along to Cassy about halfway. Lock up the transit. Wait. If you see it at all it will likely be brown to your eye have fun transitting manually it will be moving not exactly slow... a young person with a steady hand could do it. If you can see it all. Cloudy and rainy here.

If you have a motor drive CCD make sure you are booted up and programmed and that the USB cable has some extra slack. Punch up the ephemeris and (by my non-standard calculation at UTC 8:34:12 for CA which could be completely wrong) click OK for auto track. An wait to see what appears on your laptop

I'm really optimistic a few truly indy shots will pop up and some fakes too I'm afraid... maybe at another site with letters and numbers in it's addy. The age of citizen-astronomers is almost upon us. A few years as the Chinese knock off celestron products and Leica... well. CCD teles will drop in price pretty quick. Here's hoping anyway y'know?

Cheers,

Vic

[edit on 29-1-2008 by V Kaminski]

reply to post by dgtempe


Thank you

I am getting a little nervous about what he is saying. I didn't the precession of the equinox wasn't until 2150AD. I suppose I was wrong.

reply to post by V Kaminski


Vic,

You are so right in so many ways that I can't even keep the math going to keep up with you. I understand words though. I understand the lack of words too. I've worked in government. I've worked in newspaper. I've worked in politics. I've worked in corporate too. Heck of a generalist basically....just don't put me on special teams. THIS play by our government does not add up from my experience unless one of two things is happening. Either it's bigger and closer than we think....which I have pretty much ruled out because the peeps running this show have a white-knight complex and they would have swooped in by now with KNOWLEDGE to impart to us underlings, OR

They are moving it. Plain and simple. And, they don't want anyone tracking the numbers to close so they won't notice it's been moved. And they sure as heck don't want Mr. Public looking over their shoulder as this is a test of advanced capabilities with not 100% agreement in the NEO community. Seems the only rational conclusion I can draw from 90 some pages of "look at this thing from all angles" posts on this thread. Yep, it's moving day.....a bona fide conspiracy to not tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth. It's a conspiracy of ommission.

Now, back to you....cause your knowledge has been....well.....awesome.

Peace.

[edit on 29-1-2008 by DancedWithWolves]

Originally posted by elusivetruth
check out this site for all the earthquakes happening in the world:

earthquake.usgs.gov...

im assuming a direct hit by a meteor would cause seismic disturbances.

You can get an add-on for google earth to monitor, real-time, earthquakes. if I read right, it updates every 5 minutes

about 1 hr to go - then I can go to sleep

reply to post by undiscoveredsoul


Usually. Not always. Magnetosphere events don't always show... like the Northern Lights. But you can hear "waves" of static on AM radio... it pulses as the layers strip off because of energy transfer from the solar wind. During an SME event it goes nutso shedding layers... they are immediately replaced. It's the SME's that wipe space-hardware. 8:00 from the Sun to the Third Rock. One hour one minute nominal until closest approach.

Vic

reply to post by tep200377


I haven't laughed so hard in aaaaages.

Thanks for that!

reply to post by SpaceCake


Right, I gotcha. 1 lunar distance is the measurement from here to the moon (1.0LD), so TU24 is that plus 40% more (1.4LD).

How big would you say a satellite averages? 2 or 3 meters?

You can see those with your naked eye all the time. This thing is at least 80 times bigger!

What I'm asking is would that make up the difference? Or maybe the key factor here is how far away the satellites are in an LD measurement?

.1? .2? I have no idea, anyone?

reply to post by tep200377


I'm OK with BadAst but buddy should stick to astronomy. He is unpleasant to listen to and look at at the same time. No video. He should have got his significant other to do it for him. JMHO. She's smarter anyway.

Vic

lmfao i ijust sowkke up my sister lol and she didn't suspect an tyhing n i thought for sure she'd thiunk i was dsrunjk lol... what luck is that.. i'm lucky i'm watching viodes on break.com and ima laughitng on most and she cfomes out and sayt i nedt ob e quitel lol

lmfao i ijust sowkke up my sister lol and she didn't suspect an tyhing n i thought for sure she'd thiunk i was dsrunjk lol... what luck is that.. i'm lucky i'm watching viodes on break.com and ima laughitng on most and she cfomes out and sayt i nedt ob e quitel lol

^ 2 most enlightening posts in this entire topic.

T-minus 50minutes and counting

reply to post by Kaiser Sohse


Most satellites easily seen like say ISS are at an altitude of 220-ish miles... this is way, way, far away by comparison. Go with the public numbers if you want. I think it will pass inside the Moon and could be as close as 92971 miles depending wobbles and about a million other things.

That's less than half way to the Moon.

Cheers,

Vic

reply to post by tep200377


That might just be the funniest thing I've ever seen, seriously, I'm laaughing out loud!!!!

I hope i can make it for another hour.

I wish i could sleep. I guess i'm the only woman here, huh?

reply to post by V Kaminski
So you are watching the asteroid now in real time? If you are please keep us updated as to what it is doing. I'm interested to know if it does come a lot closer than the numbers have predicted. Thanks! Doyder

It's pretty difficult to track an object of velocity with any Telescope especially when the trajectory is not exact. They do have scopes with high speed motors to allow accurate tracking however the course of the object must be predetermined. As the object is quite small its light reflectivity ratio will be very low thus easily missed. All in all it's a tricky proposition to account for the Earths rotational velocity and vector combined with the objects parameters. I would imagine that optical Telescopic photography would be near impossible.

reply to post by V Kaminski


Thanks V.

And good hunting to you. I hope you get a good look at this SOB.

so 50 minutes? Should I be ready to go in a minutes notice? can anyone tell me whats up with this magnetasphere thingie?
Are we dead yet?