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You can watch event live thru a virtual online telescope Monday Jan 26, at 19:30.(My brain is not engaged enough to figure out what time that is in civilian time. This is probably Italian time zone anyway, but they do have a real-time countdown on site.
You can watch event live thru a virtual online telescope Monday Jan 26, at 19:30.(My brain is not engaged enough to figure out what time that is in civilian time. This is probably Italian time zone anyway, but they do have a real-time countdown on site.
Neither this post nor the link have any information on how close this object will come to Earth, despite the headline-writer's "very close" claim.
A little digging shows that its closest approach will be 1.2 kilometers from Earth - for comparison purposes, this is almost 100x the diameter of the Earth. Or, to put it another way, many thousands of objects this size will pass through the sphere with a 1.2-kilometer radius surrounding the Earth for every one that impacts the Earth.
And for a bit of perspective on how common it is for an object this large to come this 'close' to Earth, the next such occurrence is not expected until 2027. A little math therefore gives us a hint of how common it is for objects of this size to impact the Earth (less than once per every 100,000 years).
Neither this post nor the link have any information on how close this object will come to Earth, despite the headline-writer's "very close" claim.
A little digging shows that its closest approach will be 1.2 kilometers from Earth - for comparison purposes, this is almost 100x the diameter of the Earth. Or, to put it another way, many thousands of objects this size will pass through the sphere with a 1.2-kilometer radius surrounding the Earth for every one that impacts the Earth.
And for a bit of perspective on how common it is for an object this large to come this 'close' to Earth, the next such occurrence is not expected until 2027. A little math therefore gives us a hint of how common it is for objects of this size to impact the Earth (less than once per every 100,000 years).
If you have a shortwave receiver, you can listen to the Arecibo deep space antenna array bouncing radar off this thin:
BL86 will be above the horizon for most observers in North and South America, and for some parts of western Europe and western Africa. To readily detect its radar echo, observers should have an antenna with an effective collecting area of at least 10 square meters. BL86 will be moving rapidly across the sky. Over Jan 27 03:45 – 04:00, it will move by ~0.5º. The asteroid’s exact position on the sky will depend on where it is observed from as well as the time, but will be near (RA,Dec) = (130º,+17º). A current ephemeris can be obtained from JPL’s Horizons system: http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/?horizons.
The Arecibo transmission will be tuned to give a nominal echo center frequency of exactly 2380 MHz at geocenter. Without correction for Earth’s rotation, BL86’s radar echo will appear as slowly-drifting and within 15 kHz of 2380 MHz
Time listed is GMT. You can Google that to give you your local time.
It is actually 1.2 million km. About 745,000 miles away at its closest point.
Yes, about 3 times farther away than the moon. Passing through the Earth's neighborhood, would be more accurate. But then that wouldn't make for as compelling a headline.
Location: where you sip the tea of the breasts of the spinsters of Utica
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What if only a few astronomers had actually done the calculations to judge its path when they finally noticed it ....... what if it's actually headed directly toward us, and we will inevitably get hit, and the human race is almost certain to become extinct as a result?
Maybe they haven't told us the truth because there's nothing that could be done, and the astronomers and political leaders want us to enjoy our last few days of existence in peace, without any fear.
what if it's actually headed directly toward us, and we will inevitably get hit, and the human race is almost certain to become extinct as a result?
Maybe they haven't told us the truth because there's nothing that could be done, and the astronomers and political leaders want us to enjoy our last few days of existence in peace, without any fear.
These kinds of events don't cause extinction in seconds or minutes. They take decades or centuries. Extinction results from famine, disease and wars caused by disruption to the global climate, not by the impact itself. The dinosaurs took thousands of years to go extinct after the asteroid event - mostly by starvation and competition.
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This is probably Italian time zone anyway, but they do have a real-time countdown on site.
