Astronomy Picture of the Day -- Orbits of Potentially Hazardous Asteroids

NASA ^ | August 12, 2013 | (see photo credit)

[SunkenCiv]

Explanation: Are asteroids dangerous? Some are, but the likelihood of a dangerous asteroid striking the Earth during any given year is low. Because some past mass extinction events have been linked to asteroid impacts, however, humanity has made it a priority to find and catalog those asteroids that may one day affect life on Earth. Pictured above are the orbits of the over 1,000 known Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs). These documented tumbling boulders of rock and ice are over 140 meters across and will pass within 7.5 million kilometers of Earth -- about 20 times the distance to the Moon. Although none of them will strike the Earth in the next 100 years -- not all PHAs have been discovered, and past 100 years, many orbits become hard to predict. Were an asteroid of this size to impact the Earth, it could raise dangerous tsunamis, for example. Of course rocks and ice bits of much smaller size strike the Earth every day, usually pose no danger, and sometimes creating memorable fireball and meteor displays.

[SunkenCiv]

[Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech]

[SunkenCiv]

Highlights of the 2013 Perseids Meteor Shower

The Big One

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[SunkenCiv]

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[left that other site]

YIKES!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[taxcontrol]

Its a Spirograph!

[henkster]

Lol. I thought exactly the same thing!!

[Robe]

Somebody needs to get a traffic light up there ....

[Black Agnes]

That looks like one of my kids Spirograph pictures.

[Black Agnes]

Teach me not to read the comments first!

[PeaceBeWithYou]

Indeed!

[null and void]

Pam's Purple Spyrograph

[bmwcyle]

That is an Earth killer waiting to happen.

[Windflier]

Why does an American government agency find it necessary to communicate with the public in units of measure that the average person can’t easily conceptualize?

I know that metric units of measure are all the rage in academia these days, but American culture still thinks and conceptualizes in standard English measurements.

[mikrofon]

[citizen]

OMG! Duck!

[SunkenCiv]

More than one. :’)