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Cause for concern?: An artist's illustration of how the impact of a huge asteroid might look. NASA is constantly on the prowl for near-Earth objects - but 2007 TU24 is unlikely to hit. Credit: NASA/Don Davis PARIS: A huge asteroid will zoom past Earth next week at such a close distance that amateur astronomers should be able to spot it, specialists said Wednesday. Measuring between 150 and 600 metres across, asteroid 2007 TU24 would inflict devastating regional damage were it to hit Earth, but there is little risk of a collision, they said. It will fly by on Tuesday, being around 534,000 km from the Earth at its closest point at 8:34am GMT (7:34pm Sydney time), according to a Near Earth Object (NEO) database compiled by the University of Pisa in Italy. Close encounter "For a brief time the asteroid will be observable in dark and clear skies with amateur telescopes of three inches (7.5 cm) or larger," NASA said on its NEO web site. 2007 TU24 will make the closest approach of any known potentially hazardous asteroid of this size or larger until 2027, NASA said, adding that objects of this size come close to Earth about every five years or so on average. The rock was discovered only last October under a surveillance program run by the University of Arizona. According to the Minor Planet Centre of the Paris-based International Astronomical Union (IAU), the closest detected approach by an asteroid was on 31 March 2004 by 2004 FU162, which came within 6,500 km of Earth. The day after 2007 TU24's terrestrial flyby, asteroid 2007 WD5 is expected to come within 26,000 km of Mars, a distance that is less than a whisker in space terms. Big splat 2007 WD5 ignited a brief surge of excitement among astronomers after it was discovered in November. Initial computations of its orbit gave a roughly 1-in-25 chance that it might whack into Mars on January 30, providing a celestial show that could be monitored by U.S. and European Mars probes. Measuring about 50 metres across, it would have delivered an impact equivalent to a three-megatonne nuclear weapon. A rock of this size is thought to have exploded over Tunguska, Siberia, in 1908, felling around 80 million trees over 2,200 km2. But further calculation showed that the hoped-for big splat would be a big miss. "It's highly unlikely that it's going to hit," said NEO expert Benny Peiser of Liverpool John Moores University in northwestern England, as the odds of a collision by 2007 WD5 fell to around 0.01 per cent, or one in 10,000. Readers' comments
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In 1962 or 63 I saw a meteor
One night in 1962 or '63 I and two friends, Steve and Chris Chudic, saw a meteor skip high in the sky over Cousin's Farm in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan - U.S. It was nightime and the meteor lit up the ground to the horizon, with full color illumination, and much brighter than a sunny day for two or three seconds. It made a sound like running a handheld stick quickly over a large and coarse canvas drawn taught. It was the sound that drew and pointed my attention to the object before it disappeared. The parallax of the meteor as I remember observing it seemed to me to have been similar to that of the moon or the sun. I would have been twelve or thirteen then and likely didn't even know what "parallax" meant. So my parallax-observation could have been way off. The meteor as I also recall, traversed perhaps ten or fifteen percent of the visible sky before it disappeared back into space leaving either a small briefly and lightly luminescent cloud or an image on my retina. The meteor clearly did not impact anything more than the atmosphere high in the sky before us. All these years later, I can still recall that night as if it were just a short time ago. The light was bright enough so that all three of us spotted a dozen and a half milk cows in a pasture along with a newborn calf being licked by its mother. All of which we entirely unaware of before the light from the meteor shone upon them some fifty yards away from where we stood. Don Robertson, The American Philosopher
i really like it
hellow Don Robertson
i am tibetan girl who is right now is student and i like your real incident .But do u still think that it is real or just your imagination .I hope it is real one as u r with your two friends .What i would like to comment is that ,it is good to do some research on this meteor and i think u will get lots of new things from this .By the way thanks for your kind information and your story.