MessageToEagle.com - This time, the asteroid is going to miss our planet, but it comes back next year.
When it whizzes past Earth in 2013, a newly discovered asteroid is going to miss our planet – but not by much.
The 50 m space rock is expected to come closer than many satellites, highlighting the growing need to keep watch on hazards from above.
An amateur team discovered the unusual asteroid, dubbed 2012 DA14, on 22 February. Its small size and orbit meant that it was
spotted only after it had flown past Earth at about seven times the distance of the Moon.
However, current predictions indicate that on its next flyby, due on 15 February 2013, it will pass Earth at just 24 000 km –
closer than many commercial satellites.
"This is a safe distance, but it is still close enough to make the asteroid visible in normal binoculars," says
Detlef Koschny, responsible for near-earth objects in ESA’s Space Situational Awareness (SSA) office.
It is reported that astronomers in Spain spot 'slippery target'.
The asteroid was discovered by the La Sagra Sky Survey observatory, in the southeast of Spain, near Granada,
at an altitude of 1700 m, one of the darkest, least light-polluted locations on the European mainland.
"Considering its path in the morning sky, its rather fast angular motion, the quite faint and fading brightness and
its orbit high above the plane of Earth’s orbit, it was a slippery target – and easily could have escaped undetected
during this Earth visit," says Jaime Nomen, one of the discoverers.
The team use several automated telescopes to scan the sky, and the discovery came somewhat serendipitously after they decided to search areas of the sky where asteroids are not usually seen.
"A preliminary orbit calculation shows that 2012 DA14 has a very Earth-like orbit with a period of 366.24 days, just one more day than
our terrestrial year, and it 'jumps' inside and outside of the path of Earth two times per year," says Jaime.
Current predictions indicate that on its next flyby, due on 15 February 2013, it will pass Earth at just 24 000 km – closer than many commercial satellites. "This is a safe distance, but it is still close enough to make the asteroid visible in normal binoculars," says Detlef Koschny, responsible for near-earth objects in ESA's Space Situational Awareness (SSA) office.
Credits: ESA/La Sagra Sky Survey
While an impact with Earth has been ruled out on the asteroid’s next visit, astronomers will use that close approach for more studies and calculate the Earth and Moon’s gravitational effects on it.
"We will also be keen to see the asteroid’s resulting orbit after the next close approach in order to compute any future risk of impact," says Detlef.
Scientists estimate that there is a half a million undiscovered objects.
The La Sagra Sky Survey is operated by the Observatorio Astronomico de Mallorca and has recently joined ESA’s SSA programme.
In the future it will provide observations to the asteroid data hub that ESA is developing.
Together with information on space weather and debris, its information will help European scientists and policy-makers
understand and assess hazards, particularly if an Earth-threatening asteroid is ever found.
The discovery of 2012 DA14 is particularly significant for the Agency’s SSA office, because it is typical of the estimated
half a million undiscovered near-Earth objects up to 30 m across.
In this plot, the asteroid is the yellow dot, and Earth is green; the two orbits intersect twice per year.
A preliminary orbit calculation shows that 2012 DA14 has a very Earth-like orbit with a period of 366.24 days, just one more day than our terrestrial year, and it ‘jumps’ inside and outside of the path of Earth two times per year. While an impact with Earth has been ruled out on the asteroid’s next visit, astronomers will use that close approach for more studies and calculate the Earth and Moon’s gravitational effects on it.
Credits: Deimos-Space
"We are developing a system of automated optical telescopes that can detect asteroids just like this one, with the goal of being able spot them at least three weeks before closest approach to Earth," says Detlef.
To achieve this, ESA specialists supported by European industry are planning a network of 1 m-diameter telescopes with a combined field of view large enough to image the complete sky in one night.
The work is continuing under the Agency’s Space Situational Awareness Preparatory Programme.
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MessageToEagle.com - This time, the asteroid is going to miss our planet, but it comes back next year.
If one asteroid is detected at a short notice time, it could pose a potential danger on a world-wide scale.
Scientists are now working on a new supercomputer that can prevent an asteroid with Earth.
The idea is to blast the asteroid into space dust using an atomic bomb...
A team of astrophysicists from Germany, France and Italy have discovered in the constellation Leo is an old star.
The star's existence raised at once many questions for scientists.
The object is definitely not as its "contemporaries" that appeared immediately after the Big Bang event.
It's a very important discovery!
For the first time, an international team of scientists have detected all phases of thermonuclear burning in a
neutron star, located close to the center of the galaxy in the globular cluster Terzan 5.
Four CfA astronomers, Zachory Berta, David Charbonneau, Jean-Michel Desert, and Jonathan Irwin, together with six colleagues,
used the Hubble Space Telescope to probe the atmosphere around the transiting super-Earth known as GJ1214b.
This exoplanet has a mass of 6.5 Earth-masses and a radius of 2.7 Earth-radii, and it orbits a small M-dwarf star (its diameter
is only 21% of the Sun's).
Twenty five years ago, on 1987 February 23, the brightest supernova of modern times was observed in the Large Magellanic Cloud.
The more scientists study dark matter they know lesser and are not particularly optimistic about their results.
Astronomers from Center for Astrophysics of the University of Porto, Portugal and Oskar Klein Centre, Stockholm University, Sweden come up
with new findings regarding one of the most studied objects - the dwarf galaxy I Zw 18.
NGC 5907 is sometimes called the "Splinter" or Knife Edge Galaxy because of its unusual appearance.
It is a spiral galaxy lying in the Dragon constellation,
about 40 million light-years from Earth that could have been formed through a gigantic collision of galaxies, 8 to 9 billion years ago.