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To: tired&retired

Per Spaceweather.com

SOLAR WIND, INCOMING: A wide hole is opening in the sun’s atmosphere, and it is spewing a stream of solar wind toward Earth. G1-class geomagnetic storms are possible when the gaseous material arrives on April 19-20. Sky watchers between 50o and 60o N latitude should also be alert for STEVE, which tends to appear in that latitude range during springtime geomagnetic storms.


27 posted on 04/15/2018 2:02:41 PM PDT by tired&retired (Blessings)
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To: tired&retired

Per Spaceweather.com

With little warning, a relatively large asteroid flew through the Earth-Moon system on April 15th only 192,200 km (0.5 LD) from our planet. 2018 GE3 was discovered by the Catalina Sky Survey approaching Earth on April 14th. Hours later, amateur astronomer Michael Jäger of Weißenkirchen Austria video-recorded the space rock rushing through the southern constellation Serpens.

“According to wikipedia, 2018 GE3 is the largest known asteroid to pass that close to Earth in observational history,” says Jäger. “It was shining like a 13th magnitude star at the time of my observations.”

Based on the intensity of its reflected sunlight, 2018 GE3 must be 48 to 110 meters wide, according to NASA-JPL. This puts it into the same class as the 60-meter Tunguska impactor that leveled a forest in Siberia in 1908. A more recent point of comparison is the Chelyabinsk meteor—a ~20-meter asteroid that exploded in the atmosphere over Russia on Feb. 15, 2013, shattering windows and toppling onlookers as a fireball brighter than the sun blossomed in the blue morning Ural sky. 2018 GE3 could be 5 to 6 times wider than that object.

If 2018 GE3 had hit Earth, it would have caused regional, not global, damage, and might have disintegrated in the atmosphere before reaching the ground. Nevertheless, it is a significant asteroid, illustrating how even large space rocks can still take us by surprise. 2018 GE3 was found less than a day before before its closest approach.


28 posted on 04/15/2018 2:05:18 PM PDT by tired&retired (Blessings)
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