msondaa
JF-Expert Member
- Feb 23, 2013
- 336
- 149
An asteroid will speed past our planet
on Sunday, practically shaving
terrestrial space as the rock whizzes
past Earth just one tenth of its
distance from the moon. The rare occasion will be most
clearly witnessed in the skies above New Zealand.
The space traveler was discovered at the end of august by the
Catalina Sky Survey near Tucson, Arizona, and independently
detected the next night by the Pan-STARRS 1 telescope,
located on the summit of Haleakalā on Maui, Hawaii,
according to NASA.
At its closest, asteroid 2014 RC will be mere 34,000km from
New Zealand, while geosynchronous communications and
weather satellites remain in a 36,000km orbit. Although
closer than those satellites, it is guaranteed to pass our planet
safely on September 7 at 18:18GMT (2:18pm EDT).
While 2014 RC will not impact Earth, its orbit will bring it
back to our planet's neighborhood in the future, NASA
officials said.
The asteroid's future motion will be closely monitored, but no
future threatening Earth encounters have been identified,
NASA reassured.
Traditionally, astronomers calculate the proximity between
space objects as distances between their centers of mass,
which in the case of our planet is the center of Earths core.
On Sunday asteroid 2014 RC will reach its 40,000km
minimum from the Earths core. With the average radius of
the Earth estimated to be about 6,371km, this means the 18-
meter space rock will be actually less than 34,000km from
the planets surface.
Still, according to NASA, it will be impossible to see the space
rock passing by with the naked eye because it will be too dim
even in good weather conditions, though amateur
astronomers will have a chance to image the asteroid 2014
RC, which will be moving really fast to be tracked because of
its closeness to Earth.
There will be two webcasts of the 2014 RC asteroid passing
near the planet. One is being prepared by the Slooh
Community Observatory (begins on September 7, 02:00 GMT/
September 6, 10pm EDT), which often organizes online live
broadcast of various celestial events, another one to be
broadcasted by the Virtual Telescope Project (starting on
September 6, 22:00 GMT/6pm EDT).
So far NASA has discovered over 10,000 objects in our solar
system that have orbits passing near Earth.
http://rt.com/news/185204-asteroid-2014rc-geosynchronous-orbit/
on Sunday, practically shaving
terrestrial space as the rock whizzes
past Earth just one tenth of its
distance from the moon. The rare occasion will be most
clearly witnessed in the skies above New Zealand.
The space traveler was discovered at the end of august by the
Catalina Sky Survey near Tucson, Arizona, and independently
detected the next night by the Pan-STARRS 1 telescope,
located on the summit of Haleakalā on Maui, Hawaii,
according to NASA.
At its closest, asteroid 2014 RC will be mere 34,000km from
New Zealand, while geosynchronous communications and
weather satellites remain in a 36,000km orbit. Although
closer than those satellites, it is guaranteed to pass our planet
safely on September 7 at 18:18GMT (2:18pm EDT).
While 2014 RC will not impact Earth, its orbit will bring it
back to our planet's neighborhood in the future, NASA
officials said.
The asteroid's future motion will be closely monitored, but no
future threatening Earth encounters have been identified,
NASA reassured.
Traditionally, astronomers calculate the proximity between
space objects as distances between their centers of mass,
which in the case of our planet is the center of Earths core.
On Sunday asteroid 2014 RC will reach its 40,000km
minimum from the Earths core. With the average radius of
the Earth estimated to be about 6,371km, this means the 18-
meter space rock will be actually less than 34,000km from
the planets surface.
Still, according to NASA, it will be impossible to see the space
rock passing by with the naked eye because it will be too dim
even in good weather conditions, though amateur
astronomers will have a chance to image the asteroid 2014
RC, which will be moving really fast to be tracked because of
its closeness to Earth.
There will be two webcasts of the 2014 RC asteroid passing
near the planet. One is being prepared by the Slooh
Community Observatory (begins on September 7, 02:00 GMT/
September 6, 10pm EDT), which often organizes online live
broadcast of various celestial events, another one to be
broadcasted by the Virtual Telescope Project (starting on
September 6, 22:00 GMT/6pm EDT).
So far NASA has discovered over 10,000 objects in our solar
system that have orbits passing near Earth.
http://rt.com/news/185204-asteroid-2014rc-geosynchronous-orbit/
