Asteroid to Fly Within Moon's Orbit Tomorrow: Watch It Live Today

[Buster's Uncle]

Asteroid to Fly Within Moon's Orbit Tomorrow: Watch It Live Today
By Miriam Kramer | SPACE.com – 4 hrs ago..

Asteroid 2013 LR6 makes its closest approach on June 8th, 2013, coming with 68,350 miles (110,000 km) of Earth.


An asteroid nearly two miles long will pass by Earth Friday at a fairly close distance, at least by astronomical standards.
 

 
A small, newly discovered asteroid will pass within the distance from the Earth to the moon this weekend, and you can watch its approach live online today (June 7).

The space rock, called 2013 LR6, is between 16-53 feet wide (5-16 meters) and is in no danger of hitting the Earth, experts say. The garbage truck-size asteroid's closest approach will bring it about 68,351 miles (110,000 km) above the surface of the planet tomorrow.

You can watch a live asteroid-tracking webcast on SPACE.com today that features views and expert commentary hosted by the Virtual Telescope Project in Italy beginning at 3:30 p.m. EDT (1930 GMT). You can also follow the broadcast directly through the Virtual Telescope Project.

"It is a very safe distance, so it will be a great show!" astrophysicist Gianluca Masi with the Virtual Telescope Project wrote in a statement.

At the time of the webcast, the asteroid will be about 186,411 miles (300,000 km) away, Masi said.

Tomorrow, when it makes its closest approach, the space rock will be visible from only the Southern Hemisphere. The asteroid, at a magnitude of about 16.5 on the astronomers' brightness scale, is too dim to be seen with the naked eye.

This flyby comes on the heels of another close brush Earth had with a space rock last Friday (May 31). An asteroid the size of nine cruise ships dubbed Asteroid 1998 QE2 whizzed by our planet traveling within 3.6 million miles (5.8 million km) of Earth's surface. 1998 QE2 has its own moon, estimated at 2,000 feet (600 meters) wide, according to NASA.

2013 has been a big year for close encounters with near-Earth objects. On the same day in February, an asteroid the size of a football field flew within 17,200 miles (27,680 km) of Earth, while — in an unrelated incident — a meteor exploded over Russia, injuring hundreds and damaging property.

http://news.yahoo.com/asteroid-fly-within-moons-orbit-tomorrow-watch-live-153153909.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Asteroid the size of a small truck buzzes Earth: NASA
By Irene Klotz | Reuters – 30 mins ago..


CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - An asteroid the size of a small truck zoomed past Earth four times closer than the moon on Saturday, the latest in a parade of visiting celestial objects that has raised awareness of potentially hazardous impacts on the planet.

NASA said Asteroid 2013 LR6 was discovered about a day before its closest approach to Earth, which occurred at 12:42 a.m. EDT (0442 GMT on Saturday) about 65,000 miles over the Southern Ocean, south of Tasmania, Australia.

The 30-foot-wide (10-metre-wide) asteroid posed no threat.

A week ago, the comparatively huge 1.7-mile-wide (2.7-km-wide) asteroid QE2, complete with its own moon in tow, passed 3.6 million miles (5.8 million km) from Earth.

While on February 15, a small asteroid exploded in the atmosphere over Chelyabinsk, Russia, leaving more than 1,500 people injured by flying glass and debris. That same day, an unrelated asteroid passed just 17,200 miles from Earth, closer than the networks of communication satellites that ring the planet.

"There is theoretically a collision possible between asteroids and planet Earth," astronomer Gianluca Masi, with the Virtual Telescope project, said during a Google+ webcast that showed live images of the approaching asteroid.

NASA says it has found about 95 percent of the large asteroids, those with diameters 0.65 miles or larger, with orbits that take them relatively close to Earth.

An object of that size hit the planet about 65 million years ago in what is now Mexico's Yucatan peninsula, triggering a global climate change that is believed to be responsible for the demise of the dinosaurs and many other forms of life on Earth.

The U.S. space agency and other research organizations, as well as private companies, are working on tracking smaller objects that fly near Earth.

http://news.yahoo.com/asteroid-size-small-truck-buzzes-earth-nasa-142722320.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Huge Asteroid's Earth Flyby Captured in New Video
By Mike Wall | SPACE.com – 1 hr 57 mins ago..

This image of asteroid 1998 QE2 was obtained on June 1, 2013, when the asteroid was about 3.75 million miles (6 million kilometers) from Earth. The small white dot at upper left is the moon, or satellite, orbiting asteroid 1998 QE2.

 
A newly released video of a giant asteroid's Earth flyby last week reveals key details about the enigmatic space rock and its attendant moon.

The enormous asteroid 1998 QE2 sailed past our planet at a distance of 3.6 million miles (5.8 million kilometers) on May 31, making its closest approach for at least the next two centuries.

Scientists have been tracking 1998 QE2 using two different radar instruments — NASA's 230-foot-wide (70 meters) Deep Space Network antenna at Goldstone, Calif., and the 1,000-foot (305 m) Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. [Watch the new video of 1998 QE2's flyby]

The new video stitches together 55 images captured by the Goldstone facility on June 1, when the asteroid was about 3.75 million miles (6 million km) from Earth. Its resolution is about 125 feet (38 m) per pixel, researchers said.

Analysis of the Goldstone images has allowed scientists to refine their estimate of 1998 QE2's size, pegging the space rock's width at about 1.9 miles (3 km). The asteroid's moon, visible as a bright dot in the video, is about 2,000 feet (600 m) wide.

This moon completes one orbit every 32 hours, researchers said, and it apparently shows only one face to the larger body (just as Earth's moon always shows us its near side). The maximum distance between 1998 QE2 and its moon is about 4 miles (6.4 km).

Asteroid 1998 QE2 completes one rotation about its axis every five hours or so. It's one of the largest and slowest-spinning binary space rocks that radar instruments have ever observed, scientists said.

Multi-asteroid systems like 1998 QE2 aren't terribly uncommon. About one of every six near-Earth asteroids at least 655 feet (200 m) wide is actually a binary or triple system.

Asteroid 1998 QE2 was discovered in August 1998 by astronomers working with MIT's Lincoln Near Earth Asteroid Research program in New Mexico. It's one of 10,000 or so close-flying asteroids that have been spotted to date, out of a total population that likely numbers at least 1 million.

There was never any danger of 1998 QE2 hitting Earth on last week's flyby, researchers said. That's a good thing, because a strike by such a large space rock would be catastrophic. Any asteroid more than 0.6 miles (1 km) wide is thought to be capable of inflicting damage on a global scale, primarily by altering the planet's climate.

Astronomers plan to continue studying 1998 QE2 with the Goldstone and Arecibo dishes until Sunday (June 9), NASA officials have said.

http://news.yahoo.com/huge-asteroids-earth-flyby-captured-video-131640750.html

[Geo]

And another one missed the dirt...