Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Big and Bright Asteroid to Pass by Earth June 14

An unusually large and bright near-Earth asteroid was recently discovered and it will make its closest approach to Earth on June 14 at about 23:10 UTC. The object is so bright, the Slooh Observatory will attempt to have a live webcast showing the object sneaking past Earth at about 5.3 million km (3.35 million) miles away, or about 14 times the distance between Earth and the Moon. The asteroid, 2012 LZ1 was discovered by Rob McNaught and colleagues on 2012 June 10/11, and is about 502 meters (1,650 feet) wide.

The team of Nick Howes, Ernesto Guido and Giovanni Sostero from the Remanzacco Observatory took this image of 2012 LZ1 on June 13. They also have an animation of the object here.

There’s no danger this asteroid will impact Earth, but it has been classified as a Potentially Hazardous Asteroid. PHAs are asteroids larger than approximately 100 meters that can come closer to our planet than 0.05 AU (7.4 million km, 4.65 million miles). None of the known PHAs is on a collision course with our planet, although, as the Remanzacco team pointed out, astronomers are finding new ones all the time.

The Slooh Observatory will use a telescope on the Canary Islands and webcast the footage beginning at 00:00 UTC on Friday (8:00 p.m. EDT Thursday), and the link to the webcast is http://events.slooh.com/. Discoverer Rob McNaught will be joining the webcast for commentary. McNaught made the discovery using the Uppsala Schmidt telescope at Siding Spring Observatory in Australia.

2012 LZ1 is just a bit smaller than asteroid 2005 YU55 (502 meters), which made a very close flyby of Earth in November, 2011 at just 32,5087km (202,000 miles) away.

Want to try and see this asteroid for yourself? Check out the Minor Planet Center’s ephemeris of this object, and for reference, it will be passing near NGC 6822 (Barnard’s Galaxy) in the constellation Sagittarius at its time of closest approach.

Sources: Remanzacco Observatory, iTelescope.net

Posted on by Jon Voisey

Earth Threatened By Glowing Green Asteroid?

Killer asteroid coming for the Earth?
Killer asteroid coming for the Earth?

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The Daily Mail is reporting that a youtube user has found a strange object while poking around in Google Sky. It looks suspiciously like a glowing green asteroid and he claims it’s heading right for us. But before we call in the experts, let’s do a little bit of critical analysis on our own.

First off, the image raises alarm bells because of the apparent size of the object. Without knowing how far away it may be, it’s hard to say how large it would actually be, but we can put some limits on it. I looked up the region on Aladin and the angular distance between the two stars just to the upper right of the object is 1 arc minute. The object seems to be about that size, so we can use that as a baseline.

Assuming that the object was somewhere in the vicinity of Pluto (roughly 6 billion km), doing a bit of quick geometry means the object would be somewhere around 580,000 km. To put that in context, that’s about 40% the diameter of the Sun. If that were the case, this wouldn’t be an asteroid, it would be a small star. The funny thing about stars is that they tend to be somewhat bright and a lot more round. So that rules out that extreme.

But what if it were very close? At the distance of the moon, that would mean the object would be about 300 km in diameter which would make this thing slightly smaller than the largest asteroid, Ceres. However, this raises another issue: With that much mass, the object should still be pretty round. Additionally, with such a size and distance, it would be very bright. And it’s not.

2011 MD on Monday, June 27, 2011 at 09:30 UTC with RGB filter. Credit: Ernesto Guido, Nick Howes and Giovanni Sostero at the Faulkes Telescope South.
Even closer we run into additional issues. Astronomical images aren’t taken as a single color image. Images like this are taken in 3 filters (RGB) and then combined to make a color image. If the object is nearby, it moves from image to image, showing up in the final image in 3 places, each as a different color. For example, here’s an image of 2011 MD illustrating the effect. Given the object in question doesn’t have this tri-color separation going on, it can’t be nearby.

So this has pretty much ruled out anything anywhere in our solar system. If it’s close, it should have color issues and be bright. If it’s far, it’s too massive to have been missed. Outside of our solar system and it wouldn’t have any apparent motion and should be visible in other images. And it’s not.

In fact, searching the various databases from which Google Sky draws its data (SDSS, DSS, HST, IRAS, and WMAP), the killer asteroid doesn’t appear at all. Thus, it would seem that this object is nothing more than a technical glitch introduced by Google’s stitching together of images. Sorry conspiracy theorists. No Planet X or Nibiru out there this time!

Posted on by Jason Major

Was Pluto Ever REALLY a Planet?

Pluto, Charon, Nix and Hydra (NASA)

Ever since the infamous 2006 reclassification of Pluto off the list of “official” planets (which had a rather incendiary effect on many of the distant world’s Earthly fans) the term “planet” has been seen by some as a variable one, difficult to define and apparently able to be given and taken away. But was Pluto ever really deserving of the title to begin with?

This fun info-animation by C.G.P. Grey suggests that it wasn’t, and offers a compelling explanation why.

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Grey writes on his blog:

“To my constant surprise the issue of Pluto’s planetary status — which I think should be a dry technical issue — really gets people riled. But it’s also been my experience that the people who most want Pluto to be a planet know the least about it and the history of its discovery. So, I hope that this video can help correct that a little bit.”

We still love you, Pluto, no matter what you are!

See more of Grey’s excellent animations on YouTube here.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Video: Tiny Asteroid 2012 KT42 Crossing The Sky

2012 KT42 at closest approach. Credit: Peter Lake

A few hours ago, asteroid 2012 KT42 passed by Earth at distance of a mere 14,440 kilometers (8,950 miles), the 6th closest pass on record. This is almost three times closer than geosynchronous satellites. Alex Gibbs from the Catalina Sky Survey, the discoverer of this asteroid, created this video of 2012 KT42 during its closest approach to Earth. Don’t panic, Gibbs says, as the video shows the asteroid moving at 2,000 times the actual speed. However, the asteroid was zooming along at 17km/sec (38,000 mph). Each image is a 3 second exposure, during which the object moved, creating a trail. The images were taken on May 29, 2012 between 4:30 and 6:55 UT, the latter being 6 minutes before closest approach. This asteroid was less than 10 meters across, so was far too small to make it through our atmosphere intact, even if it did intersect directly with Earth’s path. Gibbs said the asteroid was a little brighter than expected, but otherwise lived up to its predicted pass distance and size.

Other astrophotographers also got images of 2012 KT42’s close pass. Peter Lake has this 20-second image, very close to the time of closest approach:

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Lake said he actually took 15 images via a robotic telescope, of which only three had the asteroid in them. “That’s how fast it was going,” he said.

(Video Courtesy Alex R. Gibbs, Catalina Sky Survey, University of Arizona, NASA Near-Earth Object Program.)

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Newly Found Asteroid Buzzes Earth

Discovery images of asteroid KT42. Credit: Catalina Sky Survey/Mt. Lemmon Observatory

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A newly found space rock will give Earth a close shave on May 29, passing by at a distance of just 14,440 kilometers (8,950 miles). That distance puts the small asteroid, named 2012 KT42, in the top ten list of closest asteroid approaches. In fact, this is the sixth closest approach to date. The close pass will occur at about 07:00 UTC (03:00 EDT, midnight PDT in the US) on May 29. 2012 KT42 is estimated to be between 3-10 meters in size, and while there is no possibility this asteroid will hit Earth, even if it did, it would surely burn up in the atmosphere.

The sequence of images above were sent to us by Alex Gibbs from the Catalina Sky Survey, who made the discovery of 2012 KT42 with the 1.5 meter telescope on Mt. Lemmon, Arizona on May 28. Gibbs also discovered a similar sized asteroid earlier this year, 2012 BX34, and shared with Universe Today the behind the scenes activities in the discovery of a near-Earth asteroid.

This asteroid closely followed another close pass by a different asteroid, 2012 KP24, which passed by Earth on May 28 at a distance of about 51,000 kilometers (32,000 miles). This rock was bigger, about 25 meters (80 feet) across.

Below is an animation of images of 2012 KT42 taken by Ernesto Guido, Nick Howes and Giovanni Sostero from the Remanzacco Observatory.

An animation showing the motion of 2012 KT42. Each frame is a 5-second exposure through a 2.0-m telescope. Credit: Ernesto Guido, Nick Howes and Giovanni Sostero from the Remanzacco Observatory.

The team said that at the time they took the images on May 28, 2012 KT42 was moving at about ~3.63 “/min and its magnitude was ~17.5. The images were take with the Siding Spring-Faulkes Telescope South through a 2.0-m f/10.0 Ritchey-Chretien telescope.

An interesting note pointed out by the Remanzacco team is that on May 29 at about 10:10 UT, 2012 KT42 will transit across the face of the Sun, and this could be seen from Africa, the Middle East, Asia. But it will be hard to see, if the diameter is about 5m, then the object would only appear about 0.006 of a degree against the solar disk.

In our article about Gibbs’ earlier discovery, he noted that when astronomers look through telescopes, asteroids don’t look much different from stars – they are just points of light. But asteroids are points of light which are moving; however they are moving slow enough that to detect the motion, astronomers take a series of images, usually four images spaced 10-12 minutes apart.

Then, the observers run specialized software to examine their images for any star-like objects that are moving from one image to the next. The software removes any candidates that correspond to known objects or main-belt asteroids. Gibbs said the software has a low detection threshold to avoid missing anything, so the observer looks over what the software found and determines which are real. The remaining objects that the software determines could be interesting are then sent in to the Minor Planet Center (MPC) at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for the team or others to follow up.

Thanks to Alex Gibbs and the Remanzacco team for sharing their images.

You can see more info about 2012 KT42 at JPL’s Small Body Database website, or at the Minor Planet Center.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

The Most Profitable Asteroid Is…

Artist impression of the Arkyd Interceptor, a low cost asteroid mission that enables accelerated exploration. Credit: Planetary Resources.

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With the recent announcement of the asteroid mining company, Planetary Resources, some of the most-asked questions about this enticing but complex endeavor include, what asteroids do we mine? Which are the easiest asteroids to get to? Could it really be profitable?

While Planetary Resources officials said they hope to identify a few promising targets within a decade, the initial answers to those questions are available now on a new website that estimates the costs and rewards of mining rocks in space. Called Asterank, the website uses available data from multiple scientific sources on asteroid mass and composition to try and compute which asteroids would be the best targets for mining operations.

So, which asteroids are most profitable, valuable, easily accessible and cost effective?

The winners are, according to Asterank:

Most Profitable: 253 Mathilde, a 52.8 km-diameter C-type (carbonaceous) asteroid that has an estimated value of over $100 trillion and estimated profit of $9.53 trillion (USD)
Most Cost Effective: 2000 BM19, a very small O-type asteroid (less than 1 km wide) that makes several close approaches to Earth. Its estimated value is $18.50 trillion and an estimated profit of $3.55 trillion.
Most Valuable: 253 Mathilde
Most Accessible: 2009 WY7, another small asteroid with regular close approaches of less than 1 AU. This is an S-type asteroid, a silicaceous or “stony” object that has a high accessibility score on Asterank of 7.6577.

Asterank combines both the economic and scientific features of over 580,000 asteroids in our solar system, looking specifically for platinum-group metals and water. It was created by Ian Webster, a software engineer in the San Francisco Bay Area.

“I’ve always had a strong interest in astronomy and especially space exploration,” Webster said via an email to Universe Today. “The commercialization of space through ventures like asteroid mining really excites me because I believe it’ll open space to the rest of us and improve human quality of life. My day job is at a startup unrelated to space, but my hobbies include building rockets and many side projects like this one. I have a lot of fun applying computer science in different ways and I hope that Asterank will educate and inspire people.”

Webster provides a caveat, however, to the rankings of the top 100 asteroids in each category.

“Scientists know shockingly little about the composition of asteroids,” he writes on the website. “Visit JPL’s Small Body Database and you will notice how sparse information is.”

So, this mean that there aren’t really ‘experts’ in this field, and even those most knowledgeable about asteroids likely don’t have the numbers needed to completely and accurately estimate the true value of an asteroid or the cost of mining it — “which is why Planetary Resources is going to spend years or even decades investing in LEO-telescopes and data-gathering flybys before they ever touch an asteroid,” Webster said.

Webster has used databases, websites, books and other publications to get as much accurate, up-to-date information as possible, but even then, he said everything on the website is a rough estimation.

“The primary purpose of this site is to broadly educate and inspire, rather than provide completely accurate data — which is currently impossible,” he said. “I created the site in response to the announcement of Planetary Resources. “I should point out that nearly all the measurements and hard data come from the scientists at NASA JPL, but I had a lot of fun putting the site together.”

And it is fun to peruse the various categories and see what asteroids make the top of each category.

The ranking takes into account the value of the materials on the asteroids such as metals, volatile compounds, and water; the costs of getting to an asteroid and moving the raw materials: and the comparative savings and potential profit, which at this point are very hypothetical, taking into account processing and moving raw material.

“We really don’t know yet how much it will cost to mine an object millions of miles away,” Webster said.

While this website is a first step, it offers an exciting and enjoyable initial look at the potential commercial viability of space mining.

Check out Asterank.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Crowdsourcing the Hunt for Potentially Dangerous Asteroids

Faulkes Telescope, Hawaii. Credit: ESA

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What’s the best way to look for potentially hazardous asteroids? Get as many eyes on the sky as you can. That’s the impetus behind a new partnership between the European Space Agency and the Faulkes Telescope Project, which will encourage amateur astronomers to look for asteroids, as well as providing educational opportunities that will allow students to discover potentially dangerous space rocks, too.

ESA’s Space Situational Awareness (SSA) program is part of an international effort to be on the lookout for space hazards – not only asteroids but disruptive space weather and space debris objects in Earth orbit.

But asteroids pose a problem. Often, they are hard to see because they can be very dark, they can approach rather too close before anyone sees them, and they’re often spotted only once and then disappear before the discovery can be confirmed.

That’s where crowdsourcing comes in, to get more eyes on the skies. ESA is turning to schools and amateur astronomers to help as part of Europe’s contribution to the global asteroid hunt.

This month, the UK’s Faulkes Telescope Project will become the latest team to formally support the SSA program. Spain’s La Sagra Sky Survey, operated by the Observatorio Astronomico de Mallorca, began helping SSA earlier this year.

“The wider astronomy community offers a wealth of expertise and enthusiasm, and they have the time and patience to verify new sightings; this helps tremendously,” says Detlef Koschny, Head of NEO activity at ESA’s SSA program office. “In return, we share observing time at ESA’s own Optical Ground Station in Tenerife and provide advice, support and professional validation. We’ll assist them in any way we can.”

The Faulkes Telescope Project runs both educational and research programs, based at the University of Glamorgan in the UK. The project has been active in public education and science outreach, and is a partner of the US-based Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope network, which owns and operates two telescopes. Faulkes supports hundreds of schools across Europe, offering free access to their online observing program to schools.

The Faulkes project has two telescopes where you can sign up for observing online: Haleakala, Hawaii (Latitude: N 20 42′ 27.35″ Longitude: W 156 15′ 21.72″) and Siding Spring, Australia (Latitude: S 31 16′ 23.5″ Longitude: E 149 04′ 13.0″)

“Our new cooperation with ESA is a great opportunity. Use of the 2 m-diameter telescopes in Hawaii and Siding Spring, Australia, will greatly enhance asteroid-spotting for the SSA programme, enabling fainter object detection and tracking from a global telescope network,” says Nick Howes, Pro-Am Program Manager at the Faulkes Telescope. “For European students, collaborating on exciting ESA activities and possibly detecting new NEOs is very appealing, as its engagement with one of the world’s great space agencies doing critical scientific work.”

While the Faulkes project focuses on schools, amateurs will be able to freely access the data archives. ESA’s archives are also open to all, and they work with amateur astronomers with the Teide Observatory Tenerife Asteroid Survey (TOTAS) team, who use a 1-meter telescope at the ESA’s Optical Ground Station on Tenerife in the Canary Islands. Since starting their SSA-sponsored survey work in January 2010, the TOTAS amateur astronomers have identified hundreds of asteroid candidates, over 20 of which have been confirmed and named.

Find out more about how where students in schools across the UK/EIRE and some European locations can sign up.

ESA’s Space Situational Awareness program

Source: ESA

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

You Just Got a Haircut from Asteroid 2012 JU

Orbit diagram for asteroid 2012 JU. Click for interactive orbital diagram from JPL.

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OK, we admit that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but an asteroid about the size of a school bus did come fairly close to Earth yesterday! On May 13, Asteroid 2012 JU passed harmlessly between Earth and Moon. This space rock is somewhere between 8 and 17 meters across, and it came within about 190,000 kilometers (118,000 miles) from Earth — about a half a Lunar Distance (LD), or 0.0014 AU. Its looping orbit is currently closely aligned with Earth’s (click image to see JPL’s orbit diagram applet) and will be moving rather slowly away from us over the next few weeks. There are two other known space rocks that will be making somewhat close passes by Earth later this month: 2010 KK37, which might be about 43 meters wide, will come within 2.3 LD (880,000 km) on May 19, and 2001 CQ36, which might be as big as 170 meters wide, will go by at 10 LD (3.8 million km) on May 30. There is no threat of any of these asteroids hitting our planet.

Asteroids passing between the Earth and Moon happens on a fairly regular basis. Last month, on April 1, a 46-meter wide asteroid named 2012 EG5 came within 230,000 km, and on March 26 of this year, two smaller asteroids shaved by at a mere 58,000 km and 154,000 km. And in January 2012 BX34 passed by at just 59,600 km from the Earth’s surface.

Last November, a biggie, asteroid 2005 YU55, a 400 meter wide space rock came within 325,000 km of Earth.

As for the upcoming NEO’s passing by Earth, the Lunar Meteorite Hunters website suggests being ready to view the night sky with eyes and cameras to witness any other debris that may be accompanying the space rocks. If you have a meteor/fireball/bolide sighting report please let them know by filing a sighting report at their website.

Posted on by Fraser Cain

Weekly Space Hangout – May 3, 2012

Here’s the May 3, 2012 edition of the Weekly Space Hangout, where we were joined by our usual cast of space journalists, including Alan Boyle, Nicole Gugliucci, Ian O’Neill, Jason Major, Emily Lakdawalla and Fraser Cain. We were then joined by two new people, Amy Shira Teitel from Vintage Space and Sawyer Rosenstein from the Talking Space Podcast.

It was an action-packed episode talking about asteroid mining, SpaceX delays, Shuttle retirement, killer black holes, supermassive planets (aka brown dwarfs), Enceladus/Dione flybys, and a new mission to Jupiter.

Want to watch an episode live? We record the Weekly Space Hangout every Thursday at 10:00am PDT, 1:00pm EDT. The live show will appear in Fraser’s Google+ stream, or on our YouTube Channel. You can also watch it live over on Cosmoquest.org.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Planetary Resources: The Video

Planetary Resources, Inc. has announced its plan to mine Near Earth Asteroids for their raw resources, ranging from water to precious metals like platinum. Using their Arkyd line of spacecraft, they will head to NEOs for exploration and extraction. One of the founders, Eric Anderson said they will launch their first spacecraft within 24 months, and eventually build ‘gas stations’ in space to enable deep space exploration.

The founders of this company say that resource extraction from asteroids will deliver multiple benefits to humanity and could be valued at billions of dollars annually. “The effort will tap into the high concentration of precious metals found on asteroids and provide a sustainable supply to the ever-growing population on Earth,” they said.