Look out! House-sized asteroid set to pass within 160,000km of Earth TODAY
- 15m wide space rock will pass at around 9:12pm UTC (4:12pm EST)
- Asteroid was only discovered on Sunday
- Experts say there is no risk from flyby between Earth and the Moon
- Asteroid will revisit Earth in 2018
A house-sized asteroid has been spotted heading for Earth - and will pass just 160,000km from us today.
Called asteroid 2014 UFC56, it is around 15m wide - and was only spotted for the first time yesterday.
Experts say there is no risk from the flyby, which will happen at around 4:12pm EST.
Called asteroid 2014 UFC56, it is
around 15m wide - and was only spotted for the first time yesterday. The
asteroid is the brightest object in the image. Experts say there is no
risk from the flyby, which will happen at around 9:12pm UTC.
The house-sized asteroid 2014 UF56 will pass between the Earth and the Moon.
The 15 meter wide space rock will miss our planet at a distance of about 160,000 km (0.4 lunar distances) at 9:12 p.m. UTC.
The asteroid was discovered Saturday.
Despite passing so close to Earth, few if any of us will see the flyby - even with a telescope.
Experts say it was no surprise the asteroid was not spotted until now.
'With
90% of near-Earth asteroids larger than 0.6 miles (1 km) discovered,
surveys are now focusing on finding 90% of objects larger than 460 feet
(140-m),' amateur astronomer Bob King wroes on his blog.
'We have to take it a step at a time because the total number of near-Earth asteroids is in the millions.
'That's why objects like 2014 UF56 pop up regularly in surveys each month.'
At brightest, 2014 UF56 will only reach magnitude +16, as it zips from Scutum constellation through Capricornus.
The asteroid, back in 2012 visited Mars at a distance of about 8 mln km, and will again approach the Earth on Feb. 12, 2018.
The
Virtual Telescope Project will offer a live, online event sharing
real-time images of 2014 UF56 with live commentary by their scientific
staff.
The stream, starting at 7:00 p.m. UTC, will be available at: virtualtelescope.eu.
None
of the known potentially hazardous asteroids is on a collision course
with our planet, although astronomers are finding new ones all the
time.
These
images were taken of comet C/2013 A1 Siding Spring by Nasa's Mars
Reconnaissance Orbiter on 19 October 2014 during the comet's close flyby
of Mars and the spacecraft. It is the highest-resolution image of a
comet that heralds from the Oort Cloud at the edge of the solar system
ever taken
It comes just says after a remarkable once-in-a-million-year event saw a comet hurtle past Mars.
After Opportunity snapped an image from the surface, an image from one of the Martian orbiters has been released.
And astronomers on Earth also managed to capture the extremely rare cosmic event.
The
High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on Nasa’s
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) was used to capture views of comet
C/2013 A1 Siding Spring.
The
amazing images are the highest-resolution views ever acquired of a
comet coming from the Oort Cloud at the fringes of the solar system.
And
the images have been used to estimate that the nucleus of the comet is
roughly half the size originally thought, making it about a quarter of a
mile (0.4km) wide.
This
image of Comet Siding Spring was taken by astronomers Nick Howes and
Ron Wodaski using the Tzec Muan Observatory in Australia. The comet is
the blue-ish object towards the middle of the picture, with its tail
seen streaking backwards. Mars is the bright sun-like object in the
middle, overexposed to reveal the comet
The
HiRise camera on the MRO acquired images of this comet from a minimum
distance of about 86,000 miles (138,000 kilometers), yielding a scale of
about 453 feet (138 meters) per pixel.
Another
image taken by Nick Howes using the Tzec Muan Observatory in Australia
reveals the comet and its tail as it approaches Mars.
The amazing picture sees Mars look almost as bright as the sun as the image had to be overexposed in order to reveal the comet.
'We'd
planned our observations for weeks in advance, scripting telescope code
and setting up observation plans,' Mr Howes told MailOnline.
'We
shot hundreds of images of the comet and Mars with different exposure
times, and had some technical challenges to overcome, but we're
delighted with the end result, which was part of a global collaboration
with both professional and amateur observers.
'Tzec Muan is an educational outreach observatory, so this is great motivation also for the students'
Comet
C/2013 A1, also known as Siding Spring, passed within about 87,000
miles (140,000 km) of Mars, equivalent to about one-third of the
distance between Earth and our moon.
Nasa
confirmed yesterday that all three of its Mars orbiters survived the
event unscathed, while Esa and India's spacecraft were also unaffected.
No comments:
Post a Comment