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House-Size Asteroid Zooms Close by Earth
This NASA graphic depicts the orbit (blue curve) of asteroid 2011 EB47, which will pass close by Earth within the orbit of the moon on March 16, 2011, one day after it was discovered. The asteroid poses no threat of impacting Earth.
An asteroid the size of a house zoomed by Earth Wednesday, flying within the orbit of the moon just one day after astronomers spotting the space rock in the sky, NASA says.
The small asteroid 2011 EB74 was about 47 feet across and posed no threat of hitting Earth, since it was too small to survive the trip through the planet’s atmosphere.
Instead, the asteroid passed our planet at a comfortable distance of about 203,000 miles when it made its closest approach at 5:49 p.m. EDT, NASA officials said.
For comparison, the average distance between the Earth and the moon is about Read more…
NASA Shuts Down Prolific Sky-Mapping Space Telescope
A prolific sky-mapping telescope that has spent more than a year scanning the heavens for asteroids, comets and other cosmic objects received its last command today (Feb. 17).
NASA shut down its WISE spacecraft – short for Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer – at 3:00 p.m. EST (2000 UTC) today. The mission’s principal investigator, Ned Wright of the University of California in Los Angeles, sent the final command to the now-hibernating spacecraft, according to an update from the WISE mission’s official Twitter account.
“The WISE spacecraft will remain in hibernation without ground contacts awaiting possible future use,” NASA officials said via Twitter.
WISE launched on Dec. 14, 2009 to begin a 10-month mission to collect Read more…
Nibiru, What NASA Knows & You Don’t
Ancient Folklore most of the time can be traced back to some actual event. The folklore around Nibiru and planet X goes back thousands of years, and can even be seen in the symbolism of every day architecture provided to us via secret societies, mysticism and most religions around the world.
Commonly referred to as the Crossing Planet, Planet X, Nibiru, Winged Orb, Nemesis, Wormwood, The Death Star and the Destroyer. This mystical heavenly body very well may exist. Given the misinterpretation of planet X actually being a planet, is the first mistake, which has likely led to the lack of supporting scientific evidence of its existence. Only the misnomer of Planet X would allude to this planet actually being a planet. According to mystical and esoteric history, Planet X is not a planet at all but a Brown Dwarf star, that may have its own orbiting planets.
Infrared anomalies were found in the Sagittarius constellation, and Lloyd believes the ‘dark star’ lies in this direction. Irregularities in the Kuiper Belt (a region beyond Neptune), such as objects with odd inclined orbits, indicate that science is catching up with the idea of a Planet X, he pointed out. It’s possible, he added, that NASA already discovered such a celestial body years ago, and has deliberately kept its presence a secret.
When NASA tells you that there are no large planets in our solar system that have gone undetected, they are Read more…
Asteroid impact caused huge scar on Jupiter
A massive scar that appeared in Jupiter’s atmosphere last summer was caused by an asteroid ‘the size of the Titanic’, says NASA.
By examining the signatures of the gases and dark debris produced by the impact shockwaves, the team deduced that the object was more likely a rocky asteroid than an icy comet.
“Both the fact that the impact itself happened at all and the implication that it may well have been an asteroid rather than a comet shows us that the outer solar system is a complex, violent and dynamic place, and that many surprises may be out there waiting for us,” said NASA astronomer Glenn Orton. “There is still a lot to sort out in the outer solar system.”
Before this collision, scientists had thought that the only objects that hit Jupiter were icy comets whose unstable orbits took them close enough to be sucked in by gravitational attraction. It was believed that Jupiter had already cleared most other objects, such as asteroids, from its sphere of influence.
The July 19, 2009 object likely hit Jupiter between 9 am and 11 am UTC.
As it fell through Jupiter’s atmosphere, the object created a Read more…
“Suicide” Comet Storm Hits Sun—Bigger Sun-Kisser Coming?
The sun-kissing comet Ikeya-Seki, as it appeared in the dawn sky in 1965.
Photograph by Victor R. Boswell, Jr., National Geographic
Andrew Fazekas
Published January 17, 2011
A recent storm of small comets that pelted the sun could herald the coming a much bigger icy visitor, astronomers say.
Since its launch in 1995, NASA’s Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, or SOHO, orbiter has captured pictures of 2,000 comets as they’ve flown past the sun.
Most of these comets are so-called sungrazers, relatively tiny comets whose orbits bring them so near the sun that they are often vaporized within hours of discovery. (See a picture of a sungrazer spied in October.)
The sun-watching telescope usually picks up one sungrazer every few days. But between December 13 and 22, SOHO saw more than two dozen sungrazers appear and disintegrate.
Seeing “25 comets in just ten days, that’s unprecedented,” Karl Battams, of the United States Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C., said in a statement. “It was crazy!”
According to Battams and colleagues, the comet swarm could be forerunner fragments from a much larger parent comet that may be headed along a similar path. And such a large icy body coming so near the sun would result in a spectacular sky show.
Sun-Kissing Comet “Granddaddy” on the Way? Read more…
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