Asteroid 2005 YU55 to pass near Earth on Nov. 8, 2011

[JEL]

NASA Tracking Huge Asteroid with Radar for Tuesday Encounter

Tuesday encounter?... Really? :lol:
Any coinciding addon releases then? :lol:

The universe has a sense of humor

 

[orb]

RIA Novosti: Giant asteroid to fly between Earth, moon

Discovery News: NASA Snaps New Photo of Incoming Asteroid: Big Pic

SPACE.com: City-Block-Size Asteroid 2005 YU55 to Buzz by Earth Today

Astronomy Now: The Night Sky This Week:

Asteroid 2005 YU55's close approach

There is a good opportunity to observe what is currently the largest asteroid that makes a close approach to the Earth on the evening of 8 November. Asteroid 2005 YU55 is 400 metres in size and it will make its closest approach at 11pm at a distance of 324,600km, which is 85 percent of the Earth-Moon distance (but there is no chance of it hitting the Earth!). If you have a 150mm or 200mm 'scope then, despite the presence of the Moon and the asteroid's low altitude in the western sky, it should still be possible to see it whizzing across the sky at 8.6 arcminutes a minute at the time of closest approach. As darkness falls around 6pm the asteroid will be in Ophiuchus, some 24 degrees up and glowing at mag.+15.2. Two hours later it will have brightened by one and a half magnitudes and moved into neighbouring Serpens. At the time of closest approach at 11pm it will have very swiftly moved into Delphinus and brightened to mag. +12, but you will need a clear western horizon to follow it as its altitude will have slipped to 14 degrees.

Time (8 Nov) | RA | Dec | Mag

6pm|17h 53.56m|-05° 22.5'|+15.2

7pm|18h 14.56m|-00° 36.6'|+14.5

8pm|18h 38.70m|+01° 31.3'|+13.8

9pm|19h 06.08m|+03° 54.7'|+13.2

10pm|19h 36.46m|+06° 29.0'|+12.6

11pm|20h 09.16m|+09° 05.7'|+12.1

12am|20h 43.04m|+11° 34.3'|+11.7

 

[Notebook]

BBC article:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15572634

The aircraft-carrier-sized asteroid is darkly coloured in visible wavelengths and nearly spherical, lazily spinning about once every 20 hours as it races through our neighbourhood of the Solar System.

Its an F1 aircraft-carrier!

N.

 

[dumbo2007]

Some information on how the satellite is imaged.

http://planetary.org/blog/article/00002462/

 

[orb]

The Planetary Society Blog: Live feeds on asteroid 2005 YU55 as it passes Earth


USTREAM: Clay Center Observatory

 

[Star Voyager]

Possible sighting here in Tampa. It looked like a fast moving dot headed in the direction of the Moon. This was moving too fast to be an airplane, nor was it flashing in any way.

 

[Codz]

Possible sighting here in Tampa. It looked like a fast moving dot headed in the direction of the Moon. This was moving too fast to be an airplane, nor was it flashing in any way.

Impossible to see with out a telescope. You probably saw a satillite.

 

[Star Voyager]

Darn. Well, at least I saw something in space... (que Twilight Zone music)

 

[Codz]

Get ready for Apophis in 2029. Lower than the Geo satillites!

 

[orb]

SPACE.com: Huge Asteroid 2005 YU55 Zips by Earth in Rare Close Flyby

RIA Novosti: Big space rock flies close to Earth, no harm done

 

[Codz]

They're showing a view of the Orion Nebula in the Clay stream. It's really amazing.

 

[orb]

NASA / NASA JPL:
NASA Releases Radar Movie of Asteroid 2005 YU55

November 08, 2011

PASADENA, Calif. -- Scientists working with the 230-foot-wide (70-meter) Deep Space Network antenna at Goldstone, Calif., have generated a short movie clip of asteroid 2005 YU55. The images were generated from data collected at Goldstone on Nov. 7, 2011, between 11:24 a.m. and 1:35 p.m. PST (2:24 p.m. and 4:35 p.m. EST). They are the highest-resolution images ever generated by radar of a near-Earth object.

The short movie clip can be found at: http://1.usa.gov/uVJvmS .

Each of the six frames required 20 minutes of data collection by the Goldstone radar. At the time, 2005 YU55 was approximately 860,000 miles (1.38 million kilometers) away from Earth. Resolution is 4 meters per pixel.

"The movie shows the small subset of images obtained at Goldstone on November 7 that have finished processing. By animating a sequence of radar images, we can see more surface detail than is visible otherwise," said radar astronomer Lance Benner, the principal investigator for the 2005 YU55 observations, from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "The animation reveals a number of puzzling structures on the surface that we don't yet understand. To date, we've seen less than one half of the surface, so we expect more surprises."

The trajectory of asteroid 2005 YU55 is well understood. At the point of closest approach today at 3:28 p.m. PST (6:28 p.m. EST/2328 UTC), it was no closer than 201,700 miles (324,600 kilometers), as measured from the center of Earth. The gravitational influence of the asteroid will have no detectable effect on anything here on Earth, including our planet's tides or tectonic plates. Although 2005 YU55 is in an orbit that regularly brings it to the vicinity of Earth (and Venus and Mars), the 2011 encounter with Earth is the closest this space rock has come for at least the last 200 years.

The last time a space rock as big came as close to Earth was in 1976, although astronomers did not know about the flyby at the time. The next known approach of an asteroid this large will be in 2028. NASA detects, tracks and characterizes asteroids and comets passing close to Earth using both ground- and space-based telescopes. The Near-Earth Object Observations Program, commonly called "Spaceguard," discovers these objects, characterizes a subset of them, and plots their orbits to determine if any could be potentially hazardous to our planet.

{...}



Discovery News: Keck Snaps First Infrared Pic of Asteroid 2005 YU55

 

[Yoda]

My observatory was clouded over last night so I couldn't do any imaging.
Darn.....................:beathead:

 

[RS-232]

I guess next up on the list is

COMET LEVY – closest on January 7, 2012 at .453 AU from Earth http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?ID=dK06T010;orb=1;cov=0;log=0;cad=0#orb
ASTEROID 99942 Apophis – closest on January 9, 2013 at .096 AU from Earth
http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=99942 Apophis;orb=1;cov=0;log=0;cad=0…

And only 2 days apart

 

[orb]

And only 2 days apart

And a year.

 

[RS-232]

And a year.

Ooops! You are correct ORB
Found 2 more

ASTEROID 2005 GO21 – closest on due June 22, 2012 at .442 AU from Earth
http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=2005 GO21;orb=1;cov=0;log=0;cad=0#orb

ASTEROID 4179 Toutatis – closest on December 12, 2012 at .0503 AU from Earth
http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=4179 toutatis;orb=1;cov=0;log=0;cad=0…

 

[statickid]

Impossible to see with out a telescope. You probably saw a satillite.

This is a casual observation... also the pass took two days, so it was probably going quite slow, rather than faster than any airplane... :hmm:

 

[orb]

Universe Today: Images, Video from Around the World of Asteroid 2005 YU55′s Close Pass

Animation showing Asteroid 2005 YU55 moving across the sky. Each image was a 2-second exposure, taken with the GRAS Observatory, near Mayhill, New Mexico.

Credit: Ernesto Guido, Giovanni Sostero and Nick Howes​

Near Earth Asteroid 2005 YU55 on 11-08-2011 07:18pm E.S.T., a 10 second exposure.

Credit: John Chumack​

 

[garyw]

SWIFT catches a view of 2005 YU55.

http://www.bis.gov.uk/ukspaceagency/news-and-events/2011/Nov/swift-catches-asteroid-flyby

 

[orb]

Messierhunter posted a nice close approach timelapse video of YU55 in Astrophoto thread.