What the night sky would look like if you could see every asteroid

Eliza Sankar-Gorton
The Huffington Post

If you think asteroids are rare, it's only because they're so small and dark and hard to see. An eye-opening new video (above) shows what the night sky would look like if we could see the near-Earth asteroids astronomers have discovered -- it's quite a swarm.

"We're essentially flying around the sun through this population of asteroids with our eyes closed," Scott Manley, the astronomer who created the animation and posted it to YouTube, says in the video.

The interactive video lets you pan around the night sky as if you were standing in the darkness with a powerful telescope. Manley created it to spotlight the all-too-real danger that asteroids pose to humanity.

Thinking about the threat isn't much fun, but we have to say that watching the video is. Enjoy! 

NASA acknowledging Electric Universe?: New NASA model gives glimpse into the invisible world of electric asteroids

phys.org

Space may appear empty - a soundless vacuum, but it's not an absolute void. It flows with electric activity that is not visible to our eyes. NASA is developing plans to send humans to an asteroid, and wants to know more about the electrical environment explorers will encounter there.

A solar wind blown from the surface of the sun at about a million miles per hour flows around all solar system objects, forming swirling eddies and vortices in its wake. Magnetic fields carried by the solar wind warp, twist, and snap as they slam into the magnetic fields around other objects in our solar system, blasting particles to millions of miles per hour and sending electric currents surging in magnetic storms that, around Earth, can damage sensitive technology like satellites and power grids.

On airless objects like moons and asteroids, sunlight ejects negatively charged electrons from matter, giving sunlit areas a strong positive electric charge. The solar wind is an electrically conducting gas called plasma where matter has been torn apart into electrons, which are relatively light, and positively charged ions, which are thousands of times more massive. While areas in sunlight can charge positive, areas in shadow get a strong negative charge when electrons in the solar wind rush in ahead of heavier ions to fill voids created as the solar wind flows by.

The surface of Earth is shielded from the direct effects of this activity by our planet's magnetic field, but airless objects without strong repelling magnetic fields, like small asteroids, have no protection from electrical activity in space.

NASA-sponsored researchers funded by the Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute (SSERVI) (formerly the NASA Lunar Science Institute (NLSI)) have developed a new computer model that can predict and visualize the interaction between the solar wind, solar radiation, and the surface of asteroids in unprecedented detail.

"Our model is the first to provide detailed, two-dimensional views of the complex interaction between solar activity and small objects like asteroids, using an adaptive computational technique that makes these simulations highly efficient," said Michael Zimmerman, project lead at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland.

Read more

 

Asteroid impact risks 'underappreciated'

Comment: Another classic understatement from the experts...

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BBC News

A visualisation showing where sizeable asteroids have hit the Earth in recent years has been released by the B612 Foundation.

The US-based group, which includes a number of former Nasa astronauts, campaigns on the issue of space protection.

It hopes the visualisation will press home the idea that impacts are more common than we think.

The presentation leans on data collected by the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO). 

The CTBTO operates a network of sensors that listens out for clandestine atom bomb detonations.

Between 2000 and 2013, this infrasound system catalogued 26 major explosions on Earth.

None were caused by A-bombs; they were all the result of asteroid strikes.

They ranged in energy from one to 600 kilotons. By way of comparison, the bomb that destroyed the Japanese city of Hiroshima was a 15-kiloton device.

Fortunately, most of these space rocks disintegrated high up in the atmosphere and caused few problems on the ground.

A few, people will have heard about, such as the 20m-wide object that ripped across the sky above the Russian city of Chelyabinsk last year.

But many will have gone unseen because they occurred far out over the oceans.

And just one of the 26 events was detected in advance, and then by only a matter of hours.

Read more

Asteroid that raced past Earth at 33,000mph last night came closer than the MOON

Daily Mail

• Asteroid's 2014 DX110 closest approach was at 21:07 GMT (16:07 EST)
• It is 98ft (30m) across and got within 217,000 miles (350,000km) of Earth
• Asteroid was travelling at 33,000 mph and was not expected to hit the planet 

An asteroid the size of three double decker buses and travelling at at 33,000 mph came closer to Earth than the Moon last night.

At 21:07 GMT (16:07 EST), the asteroid made its closest approach, reaching a distance of less than 217,000 miles (350,000 km), or nine-tenths of the distance between the moon and Earth.

Scientists predicted it would avoid a collision with Earth, but the 98ft (30 metre) asteroid nevertheless offered spectacular views for anyone with a good telescope in their back garden.

Read more

 

NASA's Hubble Sees Asteroid Spouting Six Comet-Like Tails

 This NASA Hubble Space Telescope set of images from Sept. 10, 2013 reveals a never-before-seen set of six comet-like tails radiating from a body in the asteroid belt designated P/2013 P5. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, D.Jewitt/UCLA Larger image and full caption.



NASA

Astronomers viewing our solar system's asteroid belt with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have seen for the first time an asteroid with six comet-like tails of dust radiating from it like spokes on a wheel.

Unlike all other known asteroids, which appear simply as tiny points of light, this asteroid, designated P/2013 P5, resembles a rotating lawn sprinkler. Astronomers are puzzled over the asteroid's unusual appearance.

"We were literally dumbfounded when we saw it," said lead investigator David Jewitt of the University of California at Los Angeles. "Even more amazing, its tail structures change dramatically in just 13 days as it belches out dust. That also caught us by surprise. It's hard to believe we’re looking at an asteroid."

Jewitt leads a team whose research paper appears online in the Nov. 7 issue of the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

P/2013 P5 has been ejecting dust periodically for at least five months. Astronomers believe it is possible the asteroid's rotation rate increased to the point where its surface started flying apart. They do not believe the tails are the result of an impact with another asteroid because they have not seen a large quantity of dust blasted into space all at once.

Scientists using the Pan-STARRS survey telescope in Hawaii announced their discovery of the asteroid Aug. 27. P/2013 P5 appeared as an unusually fuzzy-looking object. The multiple tails were discovered when Hubble was used to take a more detailed image Sept. 10.
When Hubble looked at the asteroid again Sept. 23, its appearance had totally changed. It looked as if the entire structure had swung around.

"We were completely knocked out," Jewitt said.

Careful modeling by team member Jessica Agarwal of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Lindau, Germany, showed that the tails could have been formed by a series of impulsive dust-ejection events. She calculated that dust-ejection events occurred April 15, July 18, July 24, Aug. 8, Aug. 26 and Sept. 4.  Radiation pressure from the sun stretched the dust into streamers.

Radiation pressure could have spun P/2013 P5 up. Jewitt said the spin rate could have increased enough that the asteroid's weak gravity no longer could hold it together. If that happened, dust could slide toward the asteroid's equator, shatter and fall off, and drift into space to make a tail. So far, only about 100 to 1,000 tons of dust, a small fraction of the P/2013 P5's main mass, has been lost. The asteroid's nucleus, which measures 1,400 feet wide, is thousands of times more massive than the observed amount of ejected dust.

Astronomers will continue observing P/2013 P5 to see whether the dust leaves the asteroid in the equatorial plane. If it does, this would be strong evidence for a rotational breakup. Astronomers will also try to measure the asteroid's true spin rate.

Jewitt's interpretation implies that rotational breakup must be a common phenomenon in the asteroid belt; it may even be the main way small asteroids die.

"In astronomy, where you find one, you eventually find a whole bunch more," Jewitt said. "This is just an amazing object to us, and almost certainly the first of many more to come."

Jewitt said it appears P/2013 P5 is a fragment of a larger asteroid that broke apart in a collision roughly 200 million years ago. There are many collision fragments in orbits similar to P/2013 P5's. Meteorites from these bodies show evidence of having been heated to as much as 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit. This means the asteroid likely is composed of metamorphic rocks and does not hold any ice as a comet does.

For images and more information about P/2013 P5, visit:

http://hubblesite.org/news/2013/52

For more information about NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/hubble

Asteroid YU55 coming, will swing nearer to Earth than the moon

LA Times

Get psyched, people of Earth: There's an asteroid headed our way.

On Tuesday, the asteroid known as YU55 will come closer to our planet than any other asteroid has come since 1976.

Of course, when it comes to outer space, "close" is a relative word. Scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena say YU55 will come within 201,700 miles of Earth and no closer. That's nearer than we are to the moon, but far enough away to eliminate the possibility of a collision.

"We know exactly where it is going to be, and we don't have any chance of impact for the following hundred years," Marina Brozovic, a scientist and member of the JPL Goldstone radar team, told The Times. Her team plans to track the asteroid beginning Friday.

"It is just a great scientific opportunity. It is really, really exciting."

Asteroids are basically space rocks -- debris created when the solar system was formed. YU55 is a moderate-size asteroid -- about 1,300 feet wide, or about the width of four football fields stretched end to end. Radar images taken in 2010 by the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico revealed that it appears to be spherical in shape and rotates in about 18 hours.

That same year, an optical telescope revealed the rock to be a C-class asteroid, meaning it's probably darker than charcoal and contains a lot of carbon.

Part of the reason YU55 is so interesting to the scientific community is because similar asteroids played a major role in our planet's past, and they have the potential to play a major role in the future of humankind.

Don Yeomans, manager of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office, said that asteroids colliding with Earth in the extremely distant past may have been responsible for bringing the water and carbon material that has made life on the planet possible.

And in the future, scientists say, these asteroids may serve as watering holes and fueling stations for interplanetary travel.

"We may one day be able to mine asteroids, and if we start colonizing the solar system, they will be our fueling stations," Brozovic said. 

You won't be able to see YU55 without a telescope, but be on the lookout for pictures of what scientists will be seeing.

"It's really quite an opportunity," Yeomans said in an interview with The Times. "It's not very often that something this good gets this close."

Apophis - ‘Continent Killer’

redorbit

On the heels of the return to Earth of a pair of satellites — NASA’s Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) and the German-built Röntgensatellit (ROSAT) — over the past two months comes a report of another object set to collide with our planet.

Only this one is a 20 million ton asteroid that is currently heading towards us at 23,000 miles per hour, and could collide with our planet in approximately 25 years, Alex Hannaford of the Telegraph wrote on Sunday. The asteroid in question, Apophis, is more than 800 feet wide, comprised of a mixture of rock, ice, and dust, and has been dubbed “the continent killer.”

“There are two scenarios,” Hannaford writes. “The first, and thankfully most likely, is that Apophis will fly by in April 2029, the year it is due to make its first ‘close approach’, and that’s the last we’ll see or hear of it. The second is that during that approach, it’ll pass through what scientists refer to as a ‘keyhole’ — a small area of space that can alter the asteroid’s course due to Earth’s gravity.”

“If this happens, it’ll be on a massive collision course with us seven years later, likely to be April 13, 2036 — Easter Sunday,” the Telegraph reported added, noting that experts with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California claim that it is “too far away” to predict which of the two possibilities is most likely, but that they should be able to know more in the near future.

“We don’t know precisely where Apophis is headed but we will soon, when it becomes observable again, probably in 2012 or 2013,” Paul Chodas of the U.S. space agency’s Near Earth Object (NEO) said. “Once we get radar on it we will be able to nail down its orbit and we will know the chances of it going through the keyhole and hitting in 2036. By that time, it could be a four in a million chance, and that could very well go down to zero.”

That might not be the end of it, though, as Chodas told Hannaford that the asteroid could find another one of those “keyholes” — small regions of space that can alter the course of a passing asteroid, due to a planet’s gravity — meaning that even if it misses the planet the first time, it could theoretically return and collide with the Earth’s surface later on.

Fossil from the 'last dinosaur' proves species WAS wiped out by killer asteroid, say scientists

dailymail

A horn from one of the last surviving dinosaurs could finally prove that a massive meteor strike ended the reptiles' reign on Earth. The 45cm-long fossilised browhorn belonged to a family of plant-eating dinosaurs that included the famous three-horned Triceratops. It was found at a geological site known as the Hell Creek Formation in the bleak badlands of south-east Montana, U.S., where many other dinosaur fossils have been unearthed.

What made this find so remarkable was its location, just 13cm below the rock layer that marks the Cretaceous-Tertiary or 'K-T' boundary - the point in the fossil record where the dinosaurs died. This suggests dinosaurs were around right up to the time all traces of their existence vanished.

Scientist believe they then disappeared suddenly after an abrupt global disaster rather than a slow extinction. [...]

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This is especially relevant in light of the science of cataclysm in that we may be well overdue for a similar event along with a New "Flash" Ice Age. See:

http://fireballs-meteorites.blogspot.com/

NASA: Asteroid to barely miss earth Monday

therawstory.com

Astronomers have just discovered an asteroid that is expected come close enough to Earth Monday that it will be visible with amateur telescopes.

The Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research centre (LINEAR) spotted Asteroid 2011 MD on June 22. It has an orbit similar to Earth's.

The asteroid will be visible from parts of South Africa and Antarctica when it makes its closest approach at 1:14 p.m. EDT (1714 GMT), passing just 7,500 miles (12,000 kilometers) from the Earth's surface. The rock will be so close that its trajectory will be sharply altered by the Earth's gravity.

"There is no chance that 2011 MD will hit Earth but scientists will use the close pass as opportunity to study it w/ radar observations," NASA's @AsteroidWatch tweeted last week.

Scientists say there is no danger of the bus-sized object striking Earth this time, but an impact is possible when it makes the next pass in 2022.

"Asteroid 2011 MD measures about 10 meters. Stony asteroids less than 25 m would break up in Earth's atmosphere & not cause ground damage," NASA wrote on their Twitter page.

The record for near-miss asteroids was set in February when 2011 CQ1 came with 3,400 miles (5,471 kilometers) of the planet.


Related: Something Wicked This Way Comes