He was wearing a large oblong backpack and looked for all the world like a millennial Ghostbuster.
Actually, it was my wife who was even more stirred. She's a scientist whose idea of relaxation is to scroll through Space Instagram.
Many telescopes just don't see that much. My wife's basic Celestron AstroMaster 130EQ struggles terribly with clouds.
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Which is where it may come in useful this Sunday at 11.50pm Central Time. That's when Near-Earth Asteroid 99942 Apophis passes in front of a star and is visible, so says the Observatoire de Paris, along a path traced from roughly the north-west to the south-east of the US.
While you're here, how about this:
'Potentially hazardous' asteroid taller than Ben Nevis will pass Earth | Metro News
A gigantic asteroid, taller than Britain's largest peak, will safely pass the Earth on March 21, 2021.
That hasn't stopped Nasa from dubbing it a 'potentially hazardous' asteroid because of its proximity to our planet.
The asteroid, known as 231937 (2001 FO32), will zoom by at a safe distance of 1.2 million miles from Earth – the equivalent of five times further away than the Moon.
Asteroid 231937 is the largest to 'come close' to the Earth this year and, at 1.7km is bigger than Ben Nevis and more than twice the size of the tallest building on Earth – the Burj Khalifa.
Apophis asteroid will be visible from Earth this weekend | WATE 6 On Your Side
ST. LOUIS ( KTVI ) — An asteroid the size of three football fields will pass by a star and be visible from Earth on Sunday. But have no fear, there is no danger of it hitting our planet.
With asteroid Apophis or any asteroid we know about now, there’s no need to panic,” said Will Snyder, manager at the St. Louis Science Center McDonnell Planetarium. “You don’t need to go out and buy all the toilet paper or anything.”
Is this giant asteroid on course to obliterate Earth? An expert weighs in | Dazed
Specifically, Asteroid 2001 FO32 will float past the planet on March 21. Moving at just under 77,000 miles per hour, and measuring around one kilometer in diameter, it will be the biggest and fastest known asteroid to pass so close in 2021.
"An impact of a small asteroid, say 200 to 300m across, could devastate a state or small country," he says. "An asteroid one kilometer across or larger could produce climatic effects across the globe that could result in severe food shortages, plus of course devastation close to the impact point."
And here's another article:
This Asteroid Lineup Compares Sizes of Planet Destroyers - Nerdist
Alvaro begins his comparison with a relatively small 12-foot-long asteroid, 2008 TC3. That asteroid, as its name implies, entered Earth’s atmosphere in 2008, exploding an estimated 23 miles above the Nubian desert.
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Anyone who wants an even better sense of the scale of the solar system, and the objects inside of it, should definitely check out more of Alvaro’s videos. This one , for example, compares the sizes of different moons. There are also other YouTubers who’ve made fascinating cosmic size-comparison videos. There’s even a video that compares some of the tiniest things in the universe with some of the largest. Including the universe itself.
NASA delays launch of planetary defense mission - SpaceNews
WASHINGTON — NASA will delay the launch of a mission designed to test one technique for deflecting a potentially hazardous asteroid, although that delay won't affect the spacecraft's arrival at its target.
NASA announced Feb. 17 that it will postpone the launch of its Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission from its primary launch window of July 21 to Aug. 24 of this year to a backup window that opens Nov. 24 and runs to Feb. 15, 2022. The spacecraft will launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
Andhra girl brings laurels to State by identifying asteroid - The Hindu
Kunchala Kyvalya Reddy, an eighth standard student, has brought laurels to the State by bagging a certificate from International Astronomical Search Collaboration (IASC) for "provisional discovery" of an asteroid.
She received training at the New Delhi-based Space Port India Foundation. She is studying in Narayana English Medium School at Nidadavole in West Godavari district of Andhra Pradesh.
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Interactive Map of Earth's Asteroid and Meteor Impact Craters - HeritageDaily - Archaeology News
In impacts with large objects, material can be displaced and ejected to form a crater when significant volumes of excavated material from both the object and the body impacted is melted and vaporised.
Across the history of our planet, around 190 terrestrial impact craters have been identified that still survive the Earth's geological processes, with the most recent event occurring in 1947 at the Sikhote-Alin Mountains of south-eastern Russia.
The largest of these events occurred at Vredefort in the present-day Free State province of South Africa, where an asteroid thought to have been approximately 10–15 km in diameter impacted the planet during the Paleoproterozoic Era around 2.023 billion years ago.
Happening on Twitter
Ted Cruz has the moral compass of a heroin dealer. He is a soulless vampire who will say and do anything to stay i… https://t.co/DBZPQESGwq donwinslow (from Repped by The Story Factory) Thu Feb 18 19:14:42 +0000 2021
An asteroid is approaching, so I invited one of Earth's defenders to dinner https://t.co/4f4QA6Olrw ZDNet (from USA | UK | Asia | Australia) Sun Feb 21 04:00:30 +0000 2021
Always be careful where you land your starship in an asteroid field. https://t.co/024aaMitqa starwars Thu Feb 18 17:11:24 +0000 2021
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