Asteroid 2019 OK moves across a backdrop of stars in this ISON GIF.
Posted on 08/02/2019 2:20:17 PM PDT by BenLurkin
We weren't in danger of losing a chunk of our planet to asteroid 2019 OK, but it was detected just the day before it slipped past, and that's the worrying part.
The European Space Agency had enough time to ask two telescopes in the International Scientific Optical Network (ISON) to take a look at the asteroid right before its flyby. These aren't beauty shots. The asteroid looks like a dark blob, but the observations are helping us learn more about 2019 OK.
We now know the asteroid flew by at a distance of just 40,000 miles (65,000 kilometers). Cosmically, that's fairly close.
The space rock measured in at about 330 feet (100 meters) wide. "Asteroids the size of 2019 OK size are relatively common in the solar system, but hit Earth on average only every 100,000 years,"
Asteroid 2019 OK moves across a backdrop of stars in this ISON GIF.
S. Schmalz/ISON
(Excerpt) Read more at cnet.com ...
Pong!
100k years?.......mmm........we’re overdue.........
Ahhh, the memories.
Cool! Hopefully the next one hits Congress.
corrected link:
https://www.cnet.com/news/see-the-surprise-asteroid-that-gave-earth-a-scare-in-july/
“[If it hit Earth] it makes the bang of a very large nuclear weapon – a very large one.”
How big?
“It would have hit with over 30 times the energy of the atomic blast at Hiroshima,” says Swinburne University astronomer Associate Professor Alan Duffy.
We should probably spend more money on an asteroid defense system ... but GlobalClimateWarmingChangeHoax is more important.
Did Y’all get the message?
God
5.56mm
It keeps moving across the sky over and over, over and over! How many times did it do that?
(Ahem) Yes, that is strange. They normally just zip past once.
All we need to do is make one of the little triangle things in the middle for real, and we’re set.
I believe the bombs we dropped on Bikini atoll were about 1000 times as big as Hiroshima. Bikini might look a little messed up, but the rest of the world hardly knew it.
*ping*
You mean, it MISSED us???
Crap. Why, I spent through all my retirement funds, my children’s college funds.. quit my job, told off a bunch of people when they told us we were DOOMED by this thing a while back!
And... it MISSED?!?
crap.
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