March 12th, 2012
by J.L. Galache
FUD, Fear Uncertainty & Doubt; that’s what surrounds NEA (Near Earth Asteroid) 2012 DA14 right now. As the organisation responsible for receiving, processing and cataloguing all observations of asteroids made around the world, we at the Minor Planet Center are in a unique position to understand the complexities of asteroid orbits and their possible encounters with our planet Earth. Hopefully I can distil our expertise and clear up all the false and misleading information regarding asteroid 2012 DA14 that’s floating around the internet and news lately.
Discovered by La Sagra Observatory (located in the province of Granada in Southern Spain) … Continue reading…
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February 13th, 2012
by J.L. Galache
Another close flyby will be taking place on the night of February 23rd. I know it’s more than a week away, but I thought I’d get a head start on the doom-sayers. This time we’re being visited by a rock about the size of 1.5 to 3.5 football fields (160 – 350 m), which would survive its passage through the atmosphere and reach the ground as a fair sized meteorite. Lucky for us, it will pass some 3.5 million km (2.18 million miles) from Earth, which sounds very far away, but in astronomical distances is quite close as … Continue reading…
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January 23rd, 2012
by J.L. Galache
The other evening I watched Green Lantern on DVD. I suppose it’s an OK part 1, back story, introduction to the character type of movie, for what will likely become yet another superhero franchise. Ryan Reynolds is his usual funny, charming self as Hal Jordan (the Green Lantern), the special effects are good, and I was entertained for a couple hours. At least off-duty me was. On-duty, MPC astronomer me, however, nearly choked when the Green Lantern flies away from Earth and, no sooner has our dear planet left the screen, he reaches the Asteroid Belt. Say what? He … Continue reading…
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December 3rd, 2011
by Tim Spahr, Director
These are exciting times—we’ve had the first ground-based discovery of a Kreutz sungrazing comet since 1970!
CBET 2930 reports the discovery by Terry Lovejoy (Thornlands, Queensland, Australia) of a rapidly brightening comet, now designated C/2011 W3 (Lovejoy). It appears to be one of the famous Kreutz sungrazing comets. These comets have perihelion distances (closest point to the Sun) of tiny fractions of an astronomical unit and are named after Heinrich Kreutz, the German astronomer who proved they were all fragments of a much larger comet that broke up centuries ago. Some come so close to the Sun … Continue reading…
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