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Astronomy Picture of the Day
NASA ^
| 8/17/02
| K. Zwintz, H. Tirado and A. Gomez
Posted on 08/16/2002 9:17:07 PM PDT by sleavelessinseattle
Astronomy Picture of the Day
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.
2002 August 17
Asteroid 2002 NY40
Credit: K. Zwintz (Univ. Viena), H. Tirado and A. Gomez (CTIO, NOAO)
Explanation: Asteroid 2002 NY40 will fly by planet Earth early in the morning August 18 Universal Time (late in the evening August 17 Eastern Daylight Time). Approaching to within about 530,000 kilometers or 1.3 times the Earth-Moon distance 2002 NY40 will definitely not be close enough to pose any danger of collision. But it will be close enough and just bright enough for experienced skygazers to see this 800 meter wide space rock in a small telescope or binoculars as it glides quickly through northern skies past the bright star Vega. It will also be close enough to ping with radar, and asteroid hunters using the large Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico expect to determine the three dimensional outline of 2002 NY40. Similar investigations of other near Earth asteroids have revealed some surprising shapes. In this five minute time exposure, recorded at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory on August 14, 2002 NY40 shows itself as a long smudge as it moves against a background of faint stars in the constellation Aquarius.
Tomorrow's picture: magnetic north
TOPICS: Astronomy; Astronomy Picture of the Day; Science
KEYWORDS: arecibo; asteroids; radiotelescopes; spaceweather; xplanets
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Gotta love a thread that links to Arecibo's big Radio Telescope! Also be SURE to click on other near earth asteroids as it has an asteroidcam view of Earth!
To: sleavelessinseattle; MozartLover; Joan912; NovemberCharlie; snowfox; Dawgsquat; viligantcitizen; ...
APOD PING... The game of interplanetary billiards is afoot!
To: sleavelessinseattle
One of these times we ought to attach an ion motor to one of these and see if can capture it, bring it down to low [not real low] earth orbit.
To: RightWhale
NOW you're talking my Language!!! Hey I'm at a loss for a topic for a fun fact here...do you have a suggestion? I'm dry...thanks RW!
BR
SS
To: sleavelessinseattle
To: sleavelessinseattle
Conditions for seeing this object will be poor at best here. It might be possible, but only for hardcore astronomers. We'll have to rely on those in temperate climates for reports.
To: RightWhale
Astronomy Fun Fact: 65 million years ago -- A 10-kilometer
asteroid struck north of the Yucatan
Peninsula, caused a global firestorm, then a cold
snap and finally a global warming that
extinguished the dinosaurs. How Sen. Hollings survived this catastrophe remains a mystery to the present day.
To: sleavelessinseattle
N.B.: Quito, Ecuador ought to be the best place on earth for amateur astronomy, on the equator and a couple of miles up. Any night you should be able to see almost the entire sky pole to pole all the way around. Can't imagine wanting any less than that.
To: RightWhale
You raise a great point, actually...AS advances in adaptive optics (that compensate for atmospheric "mirage" distortion as light reaches a terrestrial telescope) get better, WILL there be a need to build a Bigger Better Visible light Telescope in Space? I know the computer combination of images from synchronized optical telescopes into a single high res image is creating virtual "lenses" of great size and precision.
To: sleavelessinseattle
Ok, I clicked the "other earth asteroid" link and it said:
In the year 2004, on September 29, the Earth will pass very near Toutatis, closing to within a million miles (4 times the Earth-Moon distance) - the closest approach predicted for any asteroid or comet between now and 2060.
Today's pic says:
Approaching to within about 530,000 kilometers or 1.3 times the Earth-Moon distance 2002 NY40 will definitely not be close enough to pose any danger of collision.
You think it's a misprint, or is this not that exact of a science yet?
To: WSGilcrest
FUD selling...Fear Uncertainty and Doubt...But frankly I'm for a true Asteroid/Comet defense system. These things can have orbits out past PLUTO! no way can all that stuff be spotted optically! Albedo too faint...It is remarkable how far off even meteor shower peak predictions are though...one such error was over 6 hours off! Peak happened in Daylight on our hemisphere Fa cryin out loud!!! Here's a description of some software that models the probability of a big strike over time...
Click HERE A comet only has to get lucky ONCE...Some place else described the race to get an effective defence against spaceborne debris as an IQ test we are not prepared to pass any time soon....BR SS!
To: sleavelessinseattle
Explanation: Asteroid 2002 NY40 will fly by planet Earth early in the morning August 18 Universal Time (late in the evening August 17 Eastern Daylight Time). Reminder to self: Get those binoculars out ! 
Earth Nears Asteroid Toutatis
Credit: E. De Jong and S. Suzuki, JPL, NASA
To: All
Bad link clicking on the picture. I didn't realize there was one,
or I'd have fixed it before posting.
To: MeeknMing
You Know Saddam? I can see your house from here!
To: sleavelessinseattle
Gosh, being somewhat of a naive when it comes to computers, I don't know what to download for the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory. IT has different things for us to download in order to see the "camera" correctly. But I don't know which one to chose.. ??
Has anyone got an opinion on this? I have a new Dell with a Windows XP operating system.
I don't know if this camera is going to be a live "web" cast, or just pictures that I will have needed to download a program in order to view better. Can anyone suggest what I should do?
Thanks folks. I love this thread btw!!!
To: Vets_Husband_and_Wife
Are you referring to the "cloud camera"? I need to figure out which areas of the site you're interested to start with...There were some references to Linux bandied about which I'm useless on...What is it you want to do, IOW...
The documentation I saw was what we used to refer to as
"not ready for release", meaning incomplete...
To: sleavelessinseattle
WILL there be a need to build a Bigger Better Visible light Telescope in Space? Sure there will be continuing benefit to space telescopes, especially an adaptive array of large size such as a few million miles across. That one should be able to read a license plate on Beta Lyrae. There is probably a hardcore amateur somewhere who is doing some adaptive optics of his own, wouldn't that be a kick?
To: sleavelessinseattle
You Know Saddam? I can see your house from here!
To: MeeknMing
ROFLMAO!!! BULLSEYE!!!
To: RightWhale
Wow...Okay, so I thought flying through an Aurora show was cool and you just had to show me up with a million mile diameter virtual telescope! RW, UR2much! LOL! And of course we'd want to put a LIGO Gravimetric measurement system between the optical elements so we'd have a Gravity Wave detector of unbelievable sensitivity! We'd be able to play Who dropped the neutron star out to the edge of the Universe!
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