Asteroidi/komete- otkrica

[Astora]

Asteroid 1998 QE2 to Sail Past Earth Nine Times Larger Than Cruise Ship

 

May 15, 2013

On May 31, 2013, asteroid 1998 QE2 will sail serenely past Earth, getting no closer than about 3.6 million miles (5.8 million kilometers), or about 15 times the distance between Earth and the moon. And while QE2 is not of much interest to those astronomers and scientists on the lookout for hazardous asteroids, it is of interest to those who dabble in radar astronomy and have a 230-foot (70-meter) -- or larger -- radar telescope at their disposal.

"Asteroid 1998 QE2 will be an outstanding radar imaging target at Goldstone and Arecibo and we expect to obtain a series of high-resolution images that could reveal a wealth of surface features," said radar astronomer Lance Benner, the principal investigator for the Goldstone radar observations from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "Whenever an asteroid approaches this closely, it provides an important scientific opportunity to study it in detail to understand its size, shape, rotation, surface features, and what they can tell us about its origin. We will also use new radar measurements of the asteroid's distance and velocity to improve our calculation of its orbit and compute its motion farther into the future than we could otherwise."

The closest approach of the asteroid occurs on May 31 at 1:59 p.m. Pacific (4:59 p.m. Eastern / 20:59 UTC). This is the closest approach the asteroid will make to Earth for at least the next two centuries. Asteroid 1998 QE2 was discovered on Aug. 19, 1998, by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Lincoln Near Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) program near Socorro, New Mexico.

The asteroid, which is believed to be about 1.7 miles (2.7 kilometers) or nine Queen Elizabeth 2 ship-lengths in size, is not named after that 12-decked, transatlantic-crossing flagship for the Cunard Line. Instead, the name is assigned by the NASA-supported Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Mass., which gives each newly discovered asteroid a provisional designation starting with the year of first detection, along with an alphanumeric code indicating the half-month it was discovered, and the sequence within that half-month.

Radar images from the Goldstone antenna could resolve features on the asteroid as small as 12 feet (3.75 meters) across, even from 4 million miles away.

"It is tremendously exciting to see detailed images of this asteroid for the first time," said Benner. "With radar we can transform an object from a point of light into a small world with its own unique set of characteristics. In a real sense, radar imaging of near-Earth asteroids is a fundamental form of exploring a whole class of solar system objects."

Asteroids, which are always exposed to the sun, can be shaped like almost anything under it. Those previously imaged by radar and spacecraft have looked like dog bones, bowling pins, spheroids, diamonds, muffins, and potatoes. To find out what 1998 QE2 looks like, stay tuned. Between May 30 and June 9, radar astronomers using NASA's 230-foot-wide (70 meter) Deep Space Network antenna at Goldstone, Calif., and the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, are planning an extensive campaign of observations. The two telescopes have complementary imaging capabilities that will enable astronomers to learn as much as possible about the asteroid during its brief visit near Earth.

NASA places a high priority on tracking asteroids and protecting our home planet from them. In fact, the U.S. has the most robust and productive survey and detection program for discovering near-Earth objects. To date, U.S. assets have discovered over 98 percent of the known NEOs.

In 2012, the NEO budget was increased from $6 million to $20 million. Literally dozens of people are involved with some aspect of near-Earth object (NEO) research across NASA and its centers. Moreover, there are many more people involved in researching and understanding the nature of asteroids and comets, including those that come close to the Earth, plus those who are trying to find and track them in the first place.

In addition to the resources NASA puts into understanding asteroids, it also partners with other U.S. government agencies, university-based astronomers, and space science institutes across the country that are working to track and better understand these objects, often with grants, interagency transfers and other contracts from NASA.

NASA's Near-Earth Object Program at NASA Headquarters, Washington, manages and funds the search, study, and monitoring of asteroids and comets whose orbits periodically bring them close to Earth. JPL manages the Near-Earth Object Program Office for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

In 2016, NASA will launch a robotic probe to one of the most potentially hazardous of the known NEOs. The OSIRIS-REx mission to asteroid (101955) Bennu will be a pathfinder for future spacecraft designed to perform reconnaissance on any newly-discovered threatening objects. Aside from monitoring potential threats, the study of asteroids and comets enables a valuable opportunity to learn more about the origins of our solar system, the source of water on Earth, and even the origin of organic molecules that lead to the development of life.

NASA recently announced developing a first-ever mission to identify, capture and relocate an asteroid for human exploration. Using game-changing technologies advanced by the Administration, this mission would mark an unprecedented technological achievement that raises the bar of what humans can do in space. Capturing and redirecting an asteroid will integrate the best of NASA's science, technology and human exploration capabilities and draw on the innovation of America's brightest scientists and engineers.

More information about asteroids and near-Earth objects is available at: http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/ , http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/asteroidwatch and via Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/asteroidwatch .

More information about asteroid radar research is at: http://echo.jpl.nasa.gov/

More information about the Deep Space Network is at: http://deepspace.jpl.nasa.gov/dsn .

DC Agle 818-393-9011 Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. agle@jpl.nasa.gov

2013-163

[Astora]

Asteroid 2013 KB otkriven 17-tog maja i jos uvek nije odredjena velicina pa i putanja istog..

[Astora]

Slooh Space Camera to Track Enormous Asteroid 1998 QE2 as it zooms by Earth on its close approach

On the last day of May, at one minute to five in the afternoon (Eastern time), an impressive asteroid named 1998 QE2 will whiz past Earth at its closest approach for the next two centuries. Slooh Space Camera will cover its closest-approach on Friday, May 31st, live on Slooh.com, free to the public, starting at 1:30 PM PDT / 4:30 PM PM EDT / 20:30 UTC - International times here: http://goo.gl/aEWFG - viewers can watch live on their PC/MAC/Mobile device or by downloading the free Slooh iPad app in the iTunes store and touching the broadcast icon.

The asteroid will be traveling across the sky with a relative velocity of 10.58 kilometers per second or 23,666 mph, which is about 15 times faster than a rifle bullet. If asteroid 1998 QE2 were to hit Earth, the damage would be catastrophic - potentially an extinction level event. In comparison, the asteroid that destroyed the Dinosaurs was approximately 6 miles wide (10km).

 

[Astora]

 

Radar data of asteroid 1998 QE2 obtained on May 29, 2013, when the asteroid was about 3.75 million miles (6 million kilometers) from Earth. 1998 QE2 measures approximately 1.7 miles (2.7 kilometers) in diameter.

About 16 percent of asteroids are binary or triple systems.

[Astora]

First radar images of asteroid 1998 QE2 were obtained when the asteroid was about 3.75 million miles (6 million kilometers) from Earth. The small white dot at lower right is the moon, or satellite, orbiting asteroid 1998 QE2. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/GSSR

 

 

PASADENA, Calif. -- A sequence of radar images of asteroid 1998 QE2 was obtained on the evening of May 29, 2013, by NASA scientists using the 230-foot (70-meter) Deep Space Network antenna at Goldstone, Calif., when the asteroid was about 3.75 million miles (6 million kilometers) from Earth, which is 15.6 lunar distances.

The radar imagery revealed that 1998 QE2 is a binary asteroid. In the near-Earth population, about 16 percent of asteroids that are about 655 feet (200 meters) or larger are binary or triple systems. Radar images suggest that the main body, or primary, is approximately 1.7 miles (2.7 kilometers) in diameter and has a rotation period of less than four hours. Also revealed in the radar imagery of 1998 QE2 are several dark surface features that suggest large concavities. The preliminary estimate for the size of the asteroid's satellite, or moon, is approximately 2,000 feet (600 meters) wide. The radar collage covers a little bit more than two hours.

The radar observations were led by scientist Marina Brozovic of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

The closest approach of the asteroid occurs on May 31 at 1:59 p.m. Pacific (4:59 p.m. Eastern / 20:59 UTC), when the asteroid will get no closer than about 3.6 million miles (5.8 million kilometers), or about 15 times the distance between Earth and the moon. This is the closest approach the asteroid will make to Earth for at least the next two centuries. Asteroid 1998 QE2 was discovered on Aug. 19, 1998, by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Lincoln Near Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) program near Socorro, N.M.

The resolution of these initial images of 1998 QE2 is approximately 250 feet (75 meters) per pixel. Resolution is expected to increase in the coming days as more data become available. Between May 30 and June 9, radar astronomers using NASA's 230-foot-wide (70 meter) Deep Space Network antenna at Goldstone, Calif., and the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, will perform an extensive campaign of observations on asteroid 1998 QE2. The two telescopes have complementary imaging capabilities that will enable astronomers to learn as much as possible about the asteroid during its brief visit near Earth.

Radar is a powerful technique for studying an asteroid's size, shape, rotation state, surface features and surface roughness, and for improving the calculation of asteroid orbits. Radar measurements of asteroid distances and velocities often enable computation of asteroid orbits much further into the future than if radar observations weren't available.

NASA places a high priority on tracking asteroids and protecting our home planet from them. In fact, the United States has the most robust and productive survey and detection program for discovering near-Earth objects. To date, U.S. assets have discovered more than 98 percent of the known Near-Earth Objects.

In 2012, the Near-Earth Object budget was increased from $6 million to $20 million. Literally dozens of people are involved with some aspect of near-Earth object research across NASA and its centers. Moreover, there are many more people involved in researching and understanding the nature of asteroids and comets, including those objects that come close to Earth, plus those who are trying to find and track them in the first place.

In addition to the resources NASA puts into understanding asteroids, it also partners with other U.S. government agencies, university-based astronomers, and space science institutes across the country that are working to track and better understand these objects, often with grants, interagency transfers and other contracts from NASA.

NASA's Near-Earth Object Program at NASA Headquarters, Washington, manages and funds the search, study, and monitoring of asteroids and comets whose orbits periodically bring them close to Earth. JPL manages the Near-Earth Object Program Office for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

In 2016, NASA will launch a robotic probe to one of the most potentially hazardous of the known Near-Earth Objects. The OSIRIS-REx mission to asteroid (101955) Bennu will be a pathfinder for future spacecraft designed to perform reconnaissance on any newly-discovered threatening objects. Aside from monitoring potential threats, the study of asteroids and comets enables a valuable opportunity to learn more about the origins of our solar system, the source of water on Earth, and even the origin of organic molecules that lead to the development of life.

NASA recently announced development of a first-ever mission to identify, capture and relocate an asteroid for human exploration. Using game-changing technologies this mission would mark an unprecedented technological achievement that raises the bar of what humans can do in space. Capturing and redirecting an asteroid will integrate the best of NASA's science, technology and human exploration capabilities and draw on the innovation of America's brightest scientists and engineers.

More information about asteroids and near-Earth objects is available at: http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/ , http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/asteroidwatch and via Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/asteroidwatch .

More information about asteroid radar research is at: http://echo.jpl.nasa.gov/

[Astora]

Comet ISON is now fizzing with activity

 

(Sen) - One of the most eagerly awaited comets in history is livening up as it heads for its rendezvous with the Sun later this year.

Comet ISON has already been monitored by the Hubble Space Telescope and the Swift satellite as it races in between the orbits of Jupiter and Mars. Now another orbiting observatory, NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, has taken its own close-ups.

Images newly released show the comet, officially labelled C/2012 S1, as it appeared with Spitzer’s infrared array camera on 13 June when it lay about 500 million km from the Sun. It was clearly already fizzing with activity.

The picture on the left, taken at a wavelength of 3.6 microns, shows a tail of fine rocky dust being ejected from the comet’s head and being blown away by the pressure of the solar wind.

We’re all crossing our fingers that this is a good sign and that ISON will become very active as it approaches and rounds the Sun

The right-hand picture, at 4.5-micron wavelength, reveals a neutral gas atmosphere around the comet that is probably caused by carbon dioxide bubbling off its surface at a rate of around one million kg a day.

Comet ISON is still too faint to be seen with standard amateur equipment but that will change over the next few weeks and it may be within range of backyard telescopes towards the end of August in the morning sky.

Its discovery on September 21 last year by the Russian International Scientific Optical Network (ISON) excited astronomers when they had calculated its orbit through the Solar System. It showed that the cosmic visitor will pass less than two million km from the Sun when it reaches its closest point, called perihelion, on November 28 this year.

Optimists hope to see the comet reach an unrivalled brightness of between magnitude -11 and -16, which means that at best it could shine brighter than the Full Moon and become the comet of a lifetime. Bear in mind that it will be in the daytime sky when this close - even so it would be visible in broad daylight if it performs at best.

 

How the Hubble Space Telescope saw Comet ISON on April 10. Credit: NASA, ESA, J.-Y. Li (Planetary Science Institute), and the Hubble Comet ISON Imaging Science Team

The comet may also already be extremely bright as it approaches the Sun and as it heads back away from it, hopefully sporting a fine tail, providing it survives its close encounter. And there lies the rub, because the behaviour of comets is notoriously difficult to predict at the best of times.

UK astronomy populariser Stuart Atkinson has setup a blog, Waiting for ISON, with observing advice and star maps to help people view the comet. He told Sen: “These are fascinating observations from Spitzer. We’re all crossing our fingers that this is a good sign and that ISON will become very active as it approaches and rounds the Sun.

“Hopefully it means ISON will captivate us all in early December, but of course everyone should just try and stay calm and not get too carried away. ISON might dazzle and delight us, or disappoint and depress us, it’s too early to say yet, no matter what anyone tells you.

“It’s often said that comets are like cats but I think they’re more like politicians: sometimes they promise us the world at first, to get our attention, and then let us down! But let’s hope for the best!”

The comet has an orbit that is close to a parabola, which suggests it may be on its first journey into the inner Solar System from the Oort cloud of icy bodies that is thought to surround it. It has the consistency of a dirty snowball, being made up of dust and gases such as water, ammonia, methane and carbon dioxide left over from the formation of the planets 4.5 billion years ago.

A previous sungrazing comet, Ikeya-Seki (C/1965 S1) reached magnitude -10 in 1965 to the delight of observers. However, they were left disappointed in 1973 by another similar visitor, Comet Kohoutek, (C/1969 O1), which proved to be a bit of a damp squib.

Comet ISON was discovered by Vitali Nevski, of Vitebsk, Belarus, and Artyom Novichonok, of Kondopoga, Russia, on CCD images made with a 0.4-metre reflecting telescope near Kislovodsk, Russia. That forms part of ISON, a network of observatories across ten countries that operate to detect and track objects in space.

Comet ISON Spewing Gas & Dust In Huge Quantities, NASA Scientists Say

 

A comet that could put on a dazzling show when it zooms through the inner solar system later this year is already blasting out huge amounts of gas and dust, new observations by a NASA spacecraft show.

Images taken on June 13 by NASA's infrared Spitzer Space Telescope reveal that dust and carbon dioxide gas are streaming off Comet ISON, forming a tail about 186,400 miles (300,000 kilometers) long, researchers said.

"We estimate ISON is emitting about 2.2 million pounds (1 million kilograms) of what is most likely carbon dioxide gas and about 120 million pounds (54.4 million kg) of dust every day," Carey Lisse, leader of NASA's Comet ISON Observation Campaign and a senior research scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., said in a statement. [Photos of Comet ISON: A Potentially Great Comet]

"Previous observations made by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and the Swift Gamma-Ray Burst Mission and Deep Impact spacecraft gave us only upper limits for any gas emission from ISON," Lisse added. "Thanks to Spitzer, we now know for sure the comet's distant activity has been powered by gas."

Comet ISON was 312 million miles (502 million km) from the sun — 3.35 times farther than the Earth-sun distance — when Spitzer made the new observations, NASA officials said.

The comet, which is about 3 miles (5 km) wide, is cruising toward a close encounter with the sun on Nov. 28, when it will skim just 724,000 miles (1.16 million km) above the solar surface. ISON could blaze up dramatically around this time, perhaps shining as brightly as the full moon in the sky, researchers say.

But there's no guarantee that ISON will live up to the hype. For example, it could break apart as it approaches the sun, fizzling out as some other "comet of the century" candidates have done over the years.

While it's tough to predict the behavior of any comet, forecasting ISON's sky show is particularly difficult. Scientists think ISON is making its first-ever trip to the inner solar system from the distant and frigid Oort Cloud, a huge repository of comets that lies between roughly 600 billion and 6 trillion miles (965 billion and 9.65 trillion km) from the sun.

Comet ISON is becoming more active as it warms up during this epic journey. Researchers expect to get an increasingly detailed look at ISON's composition over time, because different materials boil off at different distances from the sun.

"Much of the carbon in the comet appears to be locked up in carbon dioxide ice," Lisse said. "We will know even more in late July and August, when the comet begins to warm up near the water-ice line outside of the orbit of Mars, and we can detect the most abundant frozen gas, which is water, as it boils away from the comet."

ISON's solar flyby promises to be more than just a skywatching spectacle. Comets are primordial bodies composed of water, ammonia, methane, carbon dioxide and other materials — the same fundamental building blocks that gave rise to the planets 4.5 billion years ago.

"ISON is very exciting," Jim Green, NASA's director of planetary science in Washington, D.C., said in a statement. "We believe that data collected from this comet can help explain how and when the solar system first formed."

The comet was discovered last September by amateur astronomers Vitali Nevski and Artyom Novichonok. It takes its name from the equipment the duo used — the International Scientific Optical Network (ISON) near Kislovodsk, Russia.

[Astora]

5 Sky Events This Week: Comet Buzzes Mars, False Dawn, Green Giant

 

 

While comet ISON will be making a flyby of Mars this week, this may be just a dress rehearsal for a much closer encounter with another comet late next year, as portrayed in this illustration. Credit: Courtesy of NASA

 

 

As the calendar turns to a new month, sky-watchers get a chance to see not only a sprinkling of shooting stars and some ghostly glows, but also a distant gas giant in its best appearance of 2013.

Comet buzzes Mars. In the predawn skies on Tuesday, October 1, famed Comet ISON (C/2012 S1) will be barnstorming the red planet, appearing only 2 degrees apart from the planet—just a little more than the width of your thumb at an arm’s length. Their proximity is no illusion, however, as a mere 6.7 million miles (10.8 million kilometers) will separate the comet from the planet during today’s close encounter.

This illustration shows comet ISON closely passing Mars on October 1, 2013. Credit: NASA

 

With the comet still being about 12th magnitude, you will need at least a 6- to 8-inch mirrored telescope to glimpse it in the eastern sky before dawn. Already backyard astronomers are reporting that the distant, puffy comet has formed a small, greenish-glowing tail. That is a sign that the sun’s heat has begun to have its effects, making the comet active by vaporizing the ice on its surface and forming a hazy cloud around its nucleus. Check out spaceweather.com’s growing ISON photo gallery from contributing backyard sky-hounds.

 

This wide-angle shot of the eastern sky before dawn September 29 shows the placement of comet ISON in relation to Mars and other familiar celestial landmarks. Credit: Malcolm Park @ Oak Heights, Ontario

 

Along with keen astronomers on the ground,  NASA and the European Space Agency are set to snag some of their own picture postcards of the Mars flyby with spacecrafts such as the Mars Curiosity and Opportunity rovers on the planet’s surface, and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Mars Express spacecraft circling the planet.

This Mars event, though, as cool as it is, is just a warm-up for another, much closer encounter with comet Siding-Springs slated to occur in late 2014. (See also “Monster Comet May Have Mars in Its Crosshairs.”)

As an added bonus skywatching event easily seen with nothing more than your unaided eyes, watch Mars , Moon and Regulus triangle in the east on Tuesday at least 30 minutes before sunrise.

Orionids kick-off. Starting on the night of Wednesday, October 2, the annual Orionid meteor shower begins, peaking nearly three weeks later on October 21 and ending on November 7. Since the waning gibbous moon will be in the sky at peak time, washing out all but the brightest shooting stars, it’s best to look for the shower before then.

Orionids appear to radiate out from their namesake constellation Orion, which rises in the northeast just before local midnight this time of the year. Orion is one of the easiest star patterns to recognize, thanks to the three bright stars that line up in a perfect row, marking the mythical figure’s belt.

Rates at peak time generally hover around 20 meteors per hour, so expect much more modest rates of no more than 10 per hour over the next couple of weeks. (Related: “New Meteor Shower Discovered; May Uncover New Comet.”)

Uranus opposition. On Thursday, October 3, the seventh planet in the solar system, Uranus, will be at official opposition—meaning that the outer planet will be at its biggest and brightest in the sky for 2013. The green ice giant will appear opposite in the sky from the sun, rising in the east after sunset in the constellation Pisces, to the far lower left of the Circlet asterism.

At magnitude 5.7, Uranus can be spied with the naked eye in the dark countryside, but you may find it easier to pick out its tiny green-blue disk with binoculars or a small telescope.

The Sky and Telescope website offers this handy finder’s starchart to help locate both ice giants, Uranus and Neptune, in the sky.

Zodiacal light. At about an hour before sunrise on Thursday, October 3, and for the next two weeks, keen sky-watchers in the Northern Hemisphere can view one of the most elusive astronomical phenomena visible in the sky—the Zodiacal light.

This pyramid-shaped beam of light is easily mistaken for the lights of a far-off city just over the dark horizon, and has also been called the false dawn. But this light is more ethereal; it is caused by sunlight reflecting off cosmic dust between the planets.

It is amazing to think about the billions of dust-sized particles that were left behind after the planets formed about 5 billion years ago.

Worlds form triangle. After sunset on Sunday, October 6, look toward the very low southwestern horizon for a razor-thin crescent moon sandwiched between Saturn above and Mercury below. To catch the cosmic trio, it is best to find a location with an unobstructed view of the southwest horizon and use binoculars to scan the sky.

 

This illustration depicts how the crescent moon will look sandwiched between Saturn and Mercury after sunset, as they will appear from Miami, Florida. Nearby Venus acts as a convenient guidepost for finding this pretty conjunction of worlds. Credit: Starry Night Software/A. Fazekas

 

The more southerly your location, the higher in the sky this event will appear. Sky-watchers in the Southern Hemisphere get a better view of the same event on October 7, with the crescent moon perched above the planetary pair much higher in the western sky after sunset.

[Astora]

Comet ISON is doing just fine!

 

Submitted by Karl on Wed, 10/09/2013 - 08:23

There has been a lot of speculation brewing over the past few days that C/2012 S1 aka comet ISON may either have already fragmented and fizzled, or is about to do so at any moment. I'm not going to point directly to any sources that are making these claims as I don't think those articles deserve the web traffic. Instead, I'll let you judge for yourselves: does this look like a fizzled out comet?

 

Comet ISON is looking more beautiful than ever in this image taken at Arizona's Mount Lemmon Observatory by Adam Block on October 8, 2013. [image Credit: Adam Block via spaceweather.com]

 

That gorgeous image was taken just a couple of days ago and to me (and my colleagues on the CIOC), it looks a lot like a healthy comet! So I think it's time I gave an update on exactly what ISON is doing right now, and what we might expect of its future behavior.

At time of writing, comet ISON is approximately 1.48AU (~221 million km, 138 million miles) from the Sun, and 1.90AU (~284 million km, 177 million miles) from Earth, and is traveling at 34.6km/s (~125,000 kph, ~77,000mph). It recently made its close approach to Mars, and now is cruising towards its extremely close brush with the Sun just 50 days from today. [Cool fact: at perihelion, ISON will be traveling at a whopping 377km/s, or over 800,000mph!]

We really do not know what comet ISON is going to do when it gets near the Sun, and we have been clear about this from the beginning. Its passage through the solar corona is going to expose it to some really pretty insane solar radiation bombardment that will begin to furiously boil its surface away. In addition to that, the gravitational tug of the Sun will pull and stretch the comet, testing its structural integrity to the absolute maximum. Either, or both, of these factors could lead to its demise at any point in the days surrounding perihelion.

However, the CIOC's Matthew Knight recently published a paper in which he outlines his reasons for why he thinks comet ISON has a pretty good chance of surviving its encounter. I have known and worked closely with Matthew for nearly ten years now, and if I had to lay money down on ISON's fate, it would definitely be on Matthew's side of the fence! Of course all of us within the CIOC have slightly differing opinions of how ISON will perform but one thing I think we all agree on is that ISON will at least reach perihelion in some appreciable form, and put on a really good show in the solar spacecraft (e.g. SOHO and STEREO). Since the CIOC was formed in early 2013, we have stated that our best guess for ISON's peak brightness at perihelion will be around mag -3 to -5. After all these months, all the rumors and speculation, and all the reports of fizzling and fragmenting... we still stand by that as our best guess.

That is all in the future though, and really is just our educated guess - the comet itself may well prove us wrong. But what we can say for certain, right now, is that comet ISON is doing just fine! It continues to behave like a fairly typical, if somewhat smaller-than-average, Oort Cloud comet. It has given no indication that it has fragmented and while such an event can never be ruled out, we see no evidence or hint that the comet is in any imminent danger of doing so. Any reports to the contrary are just speculation.

How can we be so sure? Because we can see the comet! Opposite is just one more recent example of an extremely high-quality image of ISON taken by Nick Howes, Ernesto Guido and Martino Nicolini as part of a series of daily imaging sequences they have been recording to help study the morphology (shape, size, etc) of comet ISON.

And they are not the only ones! Every day now we are seeing new and beautiful images of ISON appearing on the SpaceWeather.com Comet ISON Realtime Gallery from astronomers, both professional and amateur, from all around the world.

With this wealth of imaging data we can see that as of one day ago at least, comet ISON was happy, healthy and seemingly in one piece. If you don't believe us, go out and find your local amateur astronomy club or observatory and find out when they are planning on viewing ISON. Then you can literally see it with your own eyes!

[Astora]

Biggest half-ton chunk of Russian meteorite lifted from lakebed

The largest-discovered fragment of a Russian meteorite, weighing around 570 kilograms, has been lifted from the bed of Lake Chebarkul in the Urals.

The huge meteorite chunk split into three pieces when scientists tried to weigh it. The precise weight could not be established because the heavy object broke the scales.

“The preliminary examination... shows that this is really a fraction of the Chelyabinsk meteorite. It’s got thick burn-off, the rust is clearly seen and it’s got a big number of indents. This chunk is most probably one of the top ten biggest meteorite fragments ever found,” said Sergey Zamozdra, associate professor of Chelyabinsk State University, as cited by Interfax news agency.

Several earlier attempts to raise this massive chunk of meteorite, found by the divers at the beginning of September, failed.

The divers’ mission was hampered by a number of factors. The meteorite fragment lay 13 meters deep under water, not 6 or 8 as was initially believed.

 

Estimates concerning the layer of sediments covering the chunk were also more optimistic than what the divers actually had to deal with. It took them 10 days to pump the mud away from the rock.

The divers had to do their job in conditions of zero visibility, due to the extremely muddied waters of the lake. Storms further contributed to delays in lifting the celestial body.

The largest lifted chunk of meteorite so far weighed 11 kilograms. Scientists on Wednesday confirmed its extraterrestrial nature.

A huge meteorite, weighing around 11,000 tons, exploded over the Chelyabinsk region in Russia on February 15. It injured more than 1,600 people, and inflicted plenty of damage - around a billion rubles ($3 million dollars) worth and also caused mass media frenzy.

Overall 12 alleged pieces of meteorite have so far been raised from the lakebed.  Five of them were confirmed as meteorite fragments.

 

[Muerte]

Zar ovo već nije bilo 1982 godine u Thing od Karpentera

[Astora]

ISON is now visible in the SOHO spacecraft's C3 camera

Latest images from LASCO C3 and C2
Latest movies from LASCO C3 and C2 [Full resolution versions of C3 and C2]

TIMELINE

 

27-Nov-13 20:12 UT - Excerpt from Karl Battam's latest update:

We hope you're enjoying this roller-coaster of a ride?! When we last spoke we reported on a dramatic increase in dust production and simultaneous drop in molecular emission, potentially indicative of a catastrophic breakup of the comet's nucleus. That situation may now have changed. (We literally cut-and-pasted that sentence from the last update...)

Now that we have observations of the comet in the NASA STEREO instruments and, more recently, the ESA/NASA SOHO LASCO C3 instrument, CIOC team member Matthew Knight has been able to start recording photometry of the comet. His results seem to imply that the comet may have experienced an outburst during the (approximate) period Nov 21 - 23 with corresponding brightness increase, followed by a leveling off and then dropping back down to "pre-outburst" levels. Since entering the LASCO C3 field of view, comet ISON has increased by at least a factor of four, and indications are it may be closer to a factor of ten. In the most recently available images, the comet appears to be around magnitude +0.5.

It is now the opinion of the CIOC Team that Comet ISON is now behaving like a sungrazing comet. We can not comment on whether the nucleus is in tact or not, but our analyses indicate that its rate of brightening is directly in line with that we have experienced with other sungrazing comets. This has no implication on its chances of survival. We strongly encourage all professional solar observatories who have plans in place for observing the comet, to please do so, and the teams should plan for an object brighter than negative one magnitude (and we are being conservative on this estimate).

Today's tl;dr is somewhat upbeat: we don't know if ISON will survive, and we won't know until it either does it or vaporizes. But the comet is still "alive" and brightening dramatically in accordance with the behavior we expect of sungrazers. Professional observers with solar telescopes should plan for a negative magnitude object, and we urge observation from these facilities.

http://theskylive.com/ison-tracker

[freej!]

Pravda za kometu :D

[Loopy]

Raspade se kometa :(

[Astora]

Huge Asteroid to Fly Safely By Earth Monday: Watch It Live

 

An asteroid the size of three football fields is set to make a close brush of Earth on Monday (Feb. 17), and you can watch the flyby in a live webcast.

Near-Earth asteroid 2000 EM26 poses no threat of actually hitting the planet, but the online Slooh Space Camera will track the asteroid as it passes by Earth on Monday. The live Slooh webcast will start at 9 p.m. EST (0200 Feb. 18 GMT), and you can also watch the webcast directly through the Slooh website.

You can also watch the asteroid broadcast live on Space.com. Scientists estimate that 2000 EM26 is about 885 feet (270 meters) in diameter, and it is whizzing through the solar system at a break-neck 27,000 mph (12.37km/s), according to Slooh. During its closest approach, the asteroid will fly about 8.8 lunar distances from Earth. [See photos of potentially dangerous asteroids]

 

"We continue to discover these potentially hazardous asteroids — sometimes only days before they make their close approaches to Earth," Slooh's technical and research director, Paul Cox said in a statement. "Slooh’s asteroid research campaign is gathering momentum with Slooh members using the Slooh robotic telescopes to monitor this huge population of potentially hazardous space rocks. We need to find them before they find us!"

2000 EM26's flyby comes almost exactly a year after two major near-Earth object (NEO) events on Feb. 15, 2013. That day, as scientists were tracking the extremely close pass of the 98-foot (30 m) asteroid 2012 DA14, another, unrelated space rock unexpectedly exploded above Chelyabinsk, Russia, causing substantial damage to buildings that injured more than 1,000 people with falling glass.

The shockwave caused by the explosion damaged thousands of buildings and left thousands of people injured, but no one was killed. The approximately 65-foot-meteor (20 m) exploded 18 miles (29 km) above the ground, and it released the energy equivalent of about 20 atomic bombs, Slooh officials said.

 

"On a practical level, a previously-unknown, undiscovered asteroid seems to hit our planet and cause damage or injury once a century or so, as we witnessed on June 20, 1908 and February 15, 2013," Slooh astronomer Bob Berman said in a statement. "Every few centuries, an even more massive asteroid strikes us — fortunately usually impacting in an ocean or wasteland such an Antarctica. But the ongoing threat, and the fact that biosphere-altering events remain a real if small annual possibility, suggests that discovering and tracking all NEOs, as well as setting up contingency plans for deflecting them on short notice should the need arise, would be a wise use of resources."

Pieces of the Russian meteorite will be awarded to seven gold medal winners on Saturday at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.

The Slooh webcast will include commentary from Mark Boslough, an expert on planetary impacts. You can participate in the broadcast by using the hashtag #asteroid to ask questions during the 2000 EM26 show.

 

 

http://www.space.com/24704-asteroid-2000-em26-earth-flyby-webcast.html?utm_content=buffer66941&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

[RaveN]

koji smor, za malo!

Edited February 17, 2014 by rejven

[Rowland]

http://mondo.rs/a669292/Info/Svet/Asteroid-se-priblizava-Zemlji.html

[Astora]

2003 QQ47

 

No, Asteroid 2003 QQ47 Is NOT Going to Hit the Earth Next Week

 

Well, it took three months, but we have our first notpocalypse of 2014!

Twitter, Facebook, and other social media are spreading a story that a large asteroid named 2003 QQ47 might impact the Earth next week, specifically on March 21, 2014.

Let me be very clear right away: Nope. It won’t. This story is totally wrong! Well, the asteroid does exist, but it won’t hit us next week, and in fact can’t hit the Earth for at least a century. The truth is the asteroid will safely pass us on March 26 of this year, never getting closer than 19 million kilometers (nearly 12 million miles)—about 50 times farther away than the Moon!

 

Update, March 15 at 17:30 UTC: Gianluca Masi at the European Virtual Telescope tells me they will observe this March 26 pass of QQ47 and webcast the images live, so you can watch as this rock safely glides past Earth for yourself.)

I’m pretty sure what’s happening here is that a very old story has been recycled and is getting spread around without anyone doing any fact-checking. It’s all over Twitter and got picked up credulously by some bigger venues like the Daily Mail, which posted it with the typically understated title of “Asteroid hurtles toward Earth.” What follows after that is a breathless and almost entirely incorrect article about 2003 QQ47 that seems to simply rehash information from more than a decade ago. Seriously.^*

For example, the Mail article says the asteroid is “newly discovered,” but in fact was first detected in 2003, 11 years ago! Hence its name, 2003 QQ47. It was found to be a near-Earth asteroid, or NEA, one that does sometimes get close to us. For a while after it was discovered it was thought to have a small chance of hitting Earth, with an impact probability in August 2014 of about 1 in 250,000. But by September 2003 new observations allowed a better trajectory to be calculated, and an impact in 2014 was ruled out. This happens quite often, where a new asteroid will have only a rough orbit calculated, and an impact has long but non-zero odds of hitting us. As more observations come in the chances of impact can actually increase briefly before dropping to zero.

This is what happened with QQ47 back in 2003. Got that? An impact in 2014, this year, was shown to be out of the question more than a decade ago and was even taken off JPL’s Sentry Risk page at that time, when it was found to have no potential Earth impacts for at least 100 years. We’re quite safe from this particular asteroid.

 

The Mail article also has a quote by an astronomer named Alan Fitzsimmons, and I was able to trace this exact quote back to a CNN article and another in the Guardian … again both from 2003.

Given this, it makes me think the Mail article was either an old one that got recycled (though there is no indication on the page of this), or they just cut-and-pasted information from an old article or from some, um, less than realistic websites which panic every time an NEA comes ‘round (several New Age-y and anti-science sites have articles about a possible impact this month by QQ47). Oddly, no author is listed on the Mail article.

I’ll also note that in a Mail article from March 12, 2014 (just a few days ago) about asteroids and NASA, there is a special section highlighting the “threat” from QQ47, using that same out-of-date information and quote. Wow.

Not surprisingly, asteroid impacts terrify a lot of people, and so whenever there’s a rumor like this it spreads like a virus. That’s the downside of instant communication, of course. Hopefully this time we can stop it before it spreads too far.

 

Actually, to give you a little bit of real science, this is a pretty interesting rock. Its size isn’t well known, but it’s something like 800 to 2,000 meters (0.5–1.2 miles) in diameter. Its orbit around the Sun is roughly the same size as Earth’s but tipped by more than 60°, which is fairly unusual. This means it swings past us relatively often but tends to stay a long way away. The closest approach I saw for it is when it gets to within about 9 million km (4.5 million miles) from Earth in—get this—March 2170.

As an astronomer, I find asteroids fascinating, and it’s compelling to learn more about their potential threat to Earth. That threat is very real, and it does not help to stir the pot with false information. Besides making it harder to convince people how dangerous they really are (the “cry wolf” syndrome) it needlessly scares people. Oddly enough, I’m not a big fan of that.

If you hear about a potentially threatening asteroid and want more info, your first best bet is to go to the JPL risk page and see if it’s there. Another good way is to follow me on Twitter, as well as JPL’s Asteroid Watch, Ron Baalke, and Amy Mainzer. If there’s a rock out there with our name on it, we’ll be talking about it.

Tip o’ the Whipple Shield to Scott Peterson.

* If you get the impression I’m less than a big fan of the Daily Mail, then give yourself a gold star, or a nickel-iron asteroid, whichever is easier.

 

http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2014/03/15/asteroid_2003_qq47_rumors_of_an_impact_in_march_2014_are_false.html

[Astora]

Huge 'Beast' Asteroid to Fly By Earth Soon, Live Webcast Today

http://www.space.com/26114-asteroid-to-fly-by-earth-could-be-half-mile-wide-orbit-animation.html

 

A newfound huge asteroid, nicknamed "The Beast," is expected zoom by Earth this weekend, and you can get a sneak preview of the space rock flyby today (June 5). 

The asteroid 2014 HQ124, which is the size of a football stadium, poses no chance of hitting Earth in its flyby on Sunday (June 8), and will pass by at a range of three times the distance between the Earth-moon on Sunday (June 8). It was discovered on April 23 by NASA's Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer, a sky-mapping space telescope.

This afternoon, the online Slooh community observatory will host a live webcast preview of asteroid 2014 HQ124, beginning at 2:30 p.m. EDT (11:30 a.m. PDT/1830 GMT) at its website: http://www.slooh.com. You can also watch the asteroid 2014 HQ124 webcast on Space.com, courtesy of Slooh. The webcast will feature a discussion with Slooh astronomer Bob Berman, host Geoff Fox and asteroid impact expert Mark Boslough.

 

The mammoth asteroid 2014 HQ124 is about 1,100 feet (352 meters) across, according to scientists with NASA's Asteroid Watch program at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. [Potentially Dangerous Asteroids (Photos and Images)]

 

Asteroid 2014 HQ124 will be traveling up to 31,000 mph (14 km/s) — 17 times faster than a shot from a high-speed rifle — when it makes its closest approach to Earth on Sunday at 1:56 a.m. EDT (0556 GMT) at three lunar distances away, a Slooh representative said in a statement. One lunar distance, or the distance between the Earth and the moon, is about 238,855 miles (384,400 kilometers).

Berman said it is "disconcerting" that an asteroid this large flying so close to the planet was only spotted less than two months before its nearest approach to Earth.

"HQ124 is at least 10 times bigger, and possibly 20 times, than the asteroid that injured a thousand people last year in Chelyabinsk, Siberia," Berman said in a statement. "If it were [to] impact us, the energy released would be measured not in kilotons like the atomic bombs that ended World War II, but in H-bomb type megatons."

 

Last month, Slooh announced a partnership with NASA to get citizen scientists involved in the hunt for killer asteroids. The initiative, part of NASA's Asteroid Grand Challenge, will encourage citizen scientists to use Slooh telescope data to find and monitor near-Earth asteroids.

NASA estimates that more than 90 percent of the mountain-sized near-Earth asteroids, or objects wider than 0.6 miles (1 km), have been discovered. A space rock of this size could unleash global destruction if it were to collide with Earth.

Smaller asteroids have been much more elusive. There are believed to be 15,000 near-Earth asteroids 460 feet (140 m) wide, and of these, only about 30 percent of those have been found. Meanwhile, NASA scientists estimate that there are more than 1 million near-Earth objects with a diameter of about 100 feet (30 m); less than 1 percent of those have been detected.

[Doca]

http://np.reddit.com/r/astrophotography/comments/2jglxm/can_you_help_me_identify_what_i_captured_here/

 

 

Holy shit that's a bolide aka Fireball. That's a huge-ass meteor and its resulting trail. Astrophotographers go decades waiting to see, let alone photograph a sequence like this. Send them to sky & tel mag. or Astronomy. or APOD.

 

 

kakav user jebote :)

[rbds]

Za Astoru i druge astronome.

[Dule_smor]

par zanimljivosti, pluton i mars, da ne otvaram poseban topik:)

 

http://www.space.com/27946-pluto-spacecraft-new-horizons-wakeup.html

 

http://news.sciencemag.org/space/2014/12/mars-curiosity-rover-finds-evidence-ancient-lakes-gale-crater