Asteroid 2014 KH39 Zips Just 1.1 LD from Earth – Watch it LIVE June 3

universetoday.com ^ | June 1, 2014 | Bob King on

[BenLurkin]

Got any plans Tuesday? Good. Keep them but know this. That day around 3 p.m. CDT (20:00 UT) asteroid 2014 KH39 will silently zip by Earth at a distance of just 272,460 miles (438,480 km) or 1.14 LDs (lunar distance). Close as flybys go but not quite a record breaker. The hefty space rock will buzz across the constellation Cepheus at nearly 25,000 mph (11 km/sec) near the Little Dipper at the time.

Observers in central Europe and Africa will have dark skies for the event, however at magnitude +17 the asteroid will be too faint to spot in amateur telescopes. No worries. The Virtual Telescope Project, run by astrophysicist Gianluca Masi, will be up and running with real-time images and live commentary during the flyby. The webcast begins at 2:45 p.m. CDT June 3.

[BenLurkin]

Diagram showing the orbit of 2014 KH39. Yellow shows the portion of its orbit above the plane of Earth’s orbit (grey disk); blue is below the plane. When farthest, the asteroid travels beyond Mars into the asteroid belt. It passes closest to Earth around 3 p.m. CDT June 3. Credit: IAU Minor Planet Center

The chart shows the cumulative known total of near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) vs. time. The blue area shows all NEAs while the red shows those roughly 1 km and larger. Thanks to many ground-based surveys underway as well as space probes like the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), discovery totals have ramped up in recent years. There are probably millions of NEOs smaller than 140 meters waiting to be discovered. Credit: NASA

Most near-Earth asteroids fall into three classes named after the first asteroid discovered in that class. Apollo and Aten asteroids cross Earth’s orbit; Amors orbit just beyond Earth but cross Mars’ orbit. Credit: Wikipedia

[humblegunner]

Bob King on

So.. he's Klingon that can't type?

[Verginius Rufus]

Notice how the number of NEAs suddenly takes off about the time George W. Bush became President? For once something clearly is Bush's fault.

Not that Obama has fixed the problem...

[Verginius Rufus]

Notice how the number of NEAs suddenly takes off about the time George W. Bush became President? For once something clearly is Bush's fault.

Not that Obama has fixed the problem...

[Darksheare]

Not my fault.

[DJ MacWoW]

I get an asteroid for my birthday? Really! You shouldn’t have. It’s so extravagant!

[shibumi]

I had an assteroid once.

Doc said if I ate more roughage and took a shot of mineral oil it wouldn’t bother me.

[Darksheare]

Lol!

[humblegunner]

I had an assteroid once.

"Pix or it didn't happen."

[Darksheare]

Shibs, I’m fairly certain that’s not what the doc meant.
Unless the doc was some lovecraftian terror or Galactus?

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks BenLurkin.

join or quit view topics view or post blog bookmark post new topic subscribe

[shibumi]

[Darksheare]

!!!!
Run!

[SampleMan]

Makes me wonder, have we ever observed a large strike on the moon? It seems that given the history of the Earth, we should have observed a sizeable strike on the moon sometime in the last 2500 years.

[BenLurkin]

SOURCE: http://www.medievalists.net/2013/07/21/the-night-the-moon-exploded-and-other-lunar-tales-from-the-middle-ages/

When writing about the events of the the year 1178 in his Chronicle, Gervase of Canterbury interrupts his account of kings and wars to relate a very unusual occurrence in the night sky:

This year on the 18th of June, when the Moon, a slim crescent, first became visible, a marvellous phenomenon was seen by several men who were watching it. Suddenly, the upper horn of the crescent was split in two. From the mid point of the division, a flaming torch sprang up, spewing out over a considerable distance fire, hot coals and sparks. The body of the Moon which was below, writhed like a wounded snake. This happened a dozen times or more, and when the Moon returned to normal, the whole crescent took on a blackish appearance.

This account has puzzled modern astronomers – some suggest that the monks saw an asteroid crashing into the moon, while others believe that it was a meteorite that had entered the Earth’s atmosphere at just the right spot – between the monks and the moon – making the observers believe that what they saw was happening on the moon.

[RegulatorCountry]

There were some monks in a monastery who left a written record of a fairly large strike on the moon’s surface. Medieval period. Description was quite striking, peculiar. I recall their writing that the moon visibly wobbled, large plume ejected from the surface.

[RegulatorCountry]

That’s the one I recalled.

[MrsEmmaPeel]

too faint to spot in amateur telescopes

Oy! Settle on! Amateur telescopes can be even bigger than a massive 20 inch aperture. Amateur astronomers are no slouchers. For example: Variable Star Watch is largely due to the work of Amateur astronomers. The article probably meant to say that if you bought a small budget telescope at Walmart, you won't see the asteroid.

[SampleMan]

Thank you

[SampleMan]

Thank you