As I write this, in less than a half hour (at 19:40 UT) an asteroid 1-2 meters in size will pass about 12,000 km from the Earth’s surface: less than 7500 miles! The Earth itself is 13,000 km across, so this is a close shave indeed.
Still, it will miss, and would not be dangerous even if it did hit us. Got that? Cool.
This rock, officially named 2011 CQ1, was discovered just last night! Here’s a shot of it taken using a small 0.35 meter (14″) telescope at the Tzec Maun Observatory in New Mexico:
This is a combination of 20 short exposures tracking the asteroid; the stars appear as dotted lines while the asteroid itself as the indicated dot.
Now let me be clear: this rock will miss us, and even if it had been aimed at us it would be unlikely in the extreme to do any damage. It’s way too small. Most likely were something like this to hit us, it would explode very high in the Earth’s atmosphere, releasing as much energy as perhaps a ton or so of TNT. That may sound like a lot, ...
Full story at http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/BadAstronomyBlog/~3/0c9qOjRY5Ks/
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