Esco
February 18, 2014, 1:32am
1
Live video (open in Chrome. Starts at 9PM EST): http://live.slooh.com/
Who knows, maybe we’ll see some fireworks
Look up! Huge asteroid flies by Earth tonight
An asteroid estimated to be the size of three football fields is set for its close-up on a live webcast as it whizzes by Earth on Monday, roughly a year after one exploded over Russia and injured 1,200 people.
Slooh Space Camera plans to track the close approach of Asteroid 2000 EM26 as it races past the planet at approximately 43,000 km/hour, starting at 9 p.m. EST, the robotic telescope service said in a statement on Slooh.com .
The 270-meter asteroid was expected to streak by Earth little more than a year after another asteroid exploded on Feb. 15, 2013 over Chelyabinsk, Russia, injuring 1,200 people following a massive shock wave that shattered windows and damaged buildings.
Chelyabinsk region officials had wanted to mark the anniversary by giving a piece of the meteorite to each 2014 Winter Olympic athlete who won a medal on Saturday at the Sochi Games. However, the International Olympic Committee at the last minute said it could be done only after the games and separately.
Viewers watching Monday’s live webcast on Slooh.com can ask questions of Slooh host and astronomer Bob Berman on social media by using the hashtag #asteroid , the statement said.
The webcast will use images of Asteroid 2000 EM26 captured from Slooh’s ground-based telescopes. Its flagship observatory is located on Mount Teide in the Canary Islands, in partnership with the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands, the statement said.
“We continue to discover these potentially hazardous asteroids - sometimes only days before they make their close approaches to Earth,” Paul Coz, Slooh’s technical and research director, said in the statement.
“We need to find them before they find us!” Coz said in the statement
18 minutes to go, according to the countdown timer on the vid.
Esco
February 18, 2014, 2:08am
5
Nine times moon distance, and fainter than Pluto. Not a near miss exactly. It’s fun listening to astro-nerds live.
Esco
February 18, 2014, 2:54am
7
Fuck that was boring.
Could a mod please delete this entire thread??
Sorry, that’s not the way it works. Pretty much unless the thread was started by a spammer, it doesn’t get deleted.
Don’t post in it again, and it’ll die a pretty quick death.
Hal Briston - MPSIMS Moderator
Yeah, kinda disappointing. It was discovered in 2000, and spotted every so often for number of years and then we lost it. “Live NEO crossing” implies we actually get to see the darn thing.
Still interesting though, if you’re into this sort of thing. It’s not like I canceled my other plans, of which there were none.
It was funny to hear the host describing the “colorful video of the asteroid airburst”, and the guest says, “…um, yeah, that’s a simulation…”
Esco
February 18, 2014, 3:40am
11
blondebear:
It was funny to hear the host describing the “colorful video of the asteroid airburst”, and the guest says, “…um, yeah, that’s a simulation…”
Ahahha…that was the funniest part of the whole video
“What you’re seeing here is my driveway.”
What’s that in London buses?
Balance
February 18, 2014, 8:27am
15
I don’t know, but it’s about 774 nanoWales.
I think you divided the wrong way there - it’s got to be at least a decawhale, maybe even a hectowhale.
Wales are a measure of area, whales are a measure of volume.
Balance
February 18, 2014, 6:20pm
18
Naturally. Whales have depth, after all.
The quote in the OP, for reasons that I can only guess to be daft as a brush, elected to express the size of the asteroid in terms of area. I merely converted that information to units that should be more familiar to British television and radio audiences.
A London bus can be close to 50 feet. A football field at least 100 yards. So, it’s about 18 London Buses (lbs).
blondebear:
It was funny to hear the host describing the “colorful video of the asteroid airburst”, and the guest says, “…um, yeah, that’s a simulation…”
I enjoyed that part. Then my link crashed and I couldn’t get back in.
What happened after that? Did the asteroid hit the Earth?
