Posted on 04/09/2017 9:07:21 PM PDT by BenLurkin
A relatively large asteroid will cross Earth's orbit around the sun this month. Astrophysicists and astronomers say there is no chance of a collision, but it will be the closest flyby of an asteroid that large for at least another 10 years.
Asteroid 2014 JO25, discovered three years ago, is about 650 meters (2,100 feet) in diameter, 60 times as large as the small asteroid that plunged into our atmosphere as a meteor and exploded over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk in 2013. That blast was felt thousands of kilometers away and caused havoc on the ground, damaging more than 7,000 homes and offices and injuring 1,500 people.
Asteroid 2014 JO25's pass by Earth on April 19 will be a near miss, cosmically speaking. The U.S. space agency NASA said no one should worry: "There is no possibility for the asteroid to collide with our planet, [but] this will be a very close approach for an asteroid of this size."
The Minor Planet Center of the International Astronomical Union classifies 2014 JO25 as a "potentially hazardous asteroid." (Astronomers classify asteroids as "minor planets"; when they pass close to Earth they are termed "near Earth objects.")
An animation of the intersection of Earth’s orbit and that of 2014 JO25, prepared by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a unit of the California Institute of Technology, makes it look like an awfully close call, but the hard facts are more reassuring: At its closest point, the asteroid will be about five times as far from Earth as the moon is, more than 1.75 million kilometers away (1,087,400 miles).
Although the asteroid is expected to be twice as reflective as our moon, it will be difficult to spot in a night sky filled with stars, and certainly not without help. Scientists say the sort of telescope amateur astronomers use should be adequate to pick out the space rock as it whizzes across the sky at 120,000 kilometers per hour (74,500 mph).
EarthSky.org, a website that follows developments in the cosmos and throughout nature in general, has posted an article with detailed information to help sky-watchers find the asteroid on April 19, and for a day or two afterward.
Professional astronomers also will be tracking 2014 JO25 closely. Puerto Rico’s Arecibo Observatory, an extremely powerful radio telescope center, will study the asteroid for five days.
After all, it’s not often that something as big as this comes along, even a couple of million kilometers from home. NASA says 2014 JO25 hasn’t been this close to Earth in the past 400 years, and it will be at least 500 years before it comes back for a repeat close encounter with our planet.
Asteroids actually pass close to Earth fairly often, but it’s their size that matters. Asteroid 2017 GM made one of the closest passes by Earth ever seen — 16,000 kilometers (9,900 miles) above sea level — less than a week ago, on April 4. Little notice was taken, however, because that chunk of space rock was about the size of a small car.
Asteroids this size at 4.6 LD aren’t that uncommon.
All the more reason to delay IRS IT filings to October.
Why waste your lasts days?
Hope it’s not close enough to plow a trench through our atmosphere and disperse it.
Why don’t asteroids find Earth attractive?
They come close and yet ...
Maybe it’s our breath.
I’ve occasionally been watching Farsight and they’ve been “viewing” an asteroid either exploding over or hitting an island somewhere in the Caribbean, for this month, fair amount of damage from wind and tsunami in south FL. Interesting stuff, one of their viewers appears to have nailed the Stockholm truck terrorist attack. In my exposure, remote viewing is hit or miss, but is a genuine thing. The older guy an the two black girls on this months’ YouTube are very interesting to watch as they do their viewings, which were recorded last month. They’re attempting to track their success rate and regiment the viewings down by sectors and coordinates. Anyone can participate if they’d like, but it’s not likely that just anybody would turn up on the monthly online broadcast, those three are pretty established as their “best.”
The margin is over a million miles, or almost 5 times the earth-moon distance. Well outside of Earth’s atmosphere. This is a big asteroid, though. Had it been on a collision course with Earth instead, it could potentially wipe out a small country.
April 19- Bad Day at Black Rock!
Consider these two “facts”:
“but it will be the closest flyby of an asteroid that large for at least another 10 years.
Asteroid 2014 JO25, discovered three years ago..”
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So they are promising no bigger asteroid for ten years, but they only discovered this one three years ago! Does anyone else see a problem here?
Aren’t you glad you use Dial?
Don’t you wish everyone did?
Hmmmm....something to think about.
I wonder with each fly by these roving bodies get close to Earth, the gravitational attraction tweaks their course through the solar system, closer and closer to earth. One of these passages they will do a direct hit on Earth. I hope this is happening with other planets, like Jupiter, and they get this asteroid first.
An enormous source of resources that we should be able to tap into.
Wonder if it is Icy, Rocky, Metallic or all of the above.
An object that size is about 150 million tons of water, or 3 times that if of stone, 7 times that if of iron.
My aunt suffered from asteroids for years.
“Climate change” and Algore are sucking it in. We’re doomed.
Caught that too. A lot of asteroid double talk as it’s one area mama government won’t be able to save its adoring subjects from some day.
Gee, a million miles here, a million miles there, and poof, one day no earth, no Democrats, no worries - “Alfred E. Neuman”
Hmm, what’s more reliable, some dumbass who thinks he has psychic powers, or actual scientific measurements of an asteroid’s orbit? I’m going with “actual scientific measurements of an asteroid’s orbit.” And I’m right. The asteroid missed earth exactly as predicted, and I even photographed it myself:
http://h.dropcanvas.com/zax37/satellitestackIRISfinalweb.jpg?r
The asteroid is the dashed line from six stacked exposures, the solid line is a Delta 1 rocket body from 1972. I’m sure the flat earth contingent of Free Republic will be along any minute now to tell me how my image is fake because satellites don’t exist... and they probably don’t think asteroids do either.
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