No, this is not a "surprise", has not been "just announced", is not a "near miss", is not a "shock". [Update 14th Oct: 2015 TB145 might have been worthy of that title but not 86666] However it is interesting due to its size ...... so lets have a sensible discussion.
As someone who is corporately qualified in Management of Risk (MoR) Framework, I fully appreciate the risk assessment process and freely admit to being constantly fascinated by applying this to my asteroid work. NASA and the other Space Agencies do this very well also. Last year at the Planetary Defence conference in Frascati, Italy, the key stakeholders in Asteroid research gathered for a conference that role-played an impending impact event, which everyone hopes will never be required. So there is a good deal of risk management going on.
So lets be controversial for a minute. Catastrophic climate change is a basket of risk that MUST include ALL the risks, not just the ones designed to shut down the coal industry. If a "continent cracking" asteroid were to hit earth, there would be alot of cranky people retrospectively assessing whether we spent too much on the wrong risk. In 2011, a 10m tsunami washed away a good portion of the coast of Japan triggered by one of the other big risks, catastrophic tectonic plate shift. An asteroid strike would create much more widespread damage and much larger tsunamis.
So how do asteroids fit in this risk picture and how did this all start?
In 1989, the asteroid now known as Ascelpius (4581) 1989 FC, occupied the same point in space that earth occupied 6 hours hours later, astronomers found this out 3 days AFTER it had passed. That was a close call! At 300m diameter it would have created enormous damage if it had hit. That was a surprise, that was a shock and immediate action followed. NASA/JPL began a 10 year mission to find 90% of all known asteroids by the end of the next decade. Whilst an awarness of the asteroid belt existed, after all (29075) 1950 DA was already a known risk and still occupies the number 1 position on the Sentry Risk table to this day. One of the major discoveries which was also unexpected was the amount of asteroids found in the range of 100m to 1Klm diameter. The Sentry Risk Table is now maintained by the NASA/JPL and tracks potential collisions there are 575 entries in the table.
Today there are 693000 known asteroids, 13000 of which are Near Earth Asteroids (NEAs), 17 of which have been discovered this month. So the risk is there, and after a decade of research, the scale of the risk had been under estimated.
Potentially hazardous asteroids (PHAs) are asteroids that come within 0.05 AU, or 5% of the earth-sun distance, and are greater than 100m diameter. The theoritcal "simple atmospheric physics" suggests that anything less than 80m diameter should "mostly" burn up in the atmosphere. However after the widespread damage caused by the Chelyabinsk Meteorite in Russia in 2013, which is thought to have been about 15-20m diameter, this threshold is now being re-assessed.
Its a fine line between education about risk, and overstating the risk of a particular event. Whilst each close pass can be used to build understanding of the risk and rally resources towards the efforts required to quantify the risk - its difficult.
Enter the modern media - recently distrupted by internet technology which fundamentally changed their engagement models and revenue streams. Often the journalists put up a sensational headline to get the click through to an article, which once you get past the headline, isn't quite so bad. This week we have seen a combination of these issues around Asteroid (86666) 2000 FL10. Now we also have the "Doomsday Preppers" and end of the world and conspiracy bloggers weighing in, with their own exaggerations and at times outright mis-information. What drives their interest in all this?
Escatological bible students have long been aware of a passage in Revelation of St John's vision of a "star falling from heaven and consuming a 1/3 of the land, sea and rivers", this star is given the name Wormwood. Learmonth Observatory has a Project Wormwood which is loosely derived from that text. However the leap to "number of his name (666)" later in Revelation and tying it to this asteroid, its beyond ridiculous, even for bible scholars. It is interesting however, that culturally, this is what drives the interest of "end-timers" and "doomsday preppers" in asteroids that come near the earth.
If only they could use their internet skills to actually help and track the asteroids through one of the many citizen science projects.
So that brings us back to "crying wolf". Asoep's famous fable (at least in western culture) about the shepherd boy who "cried wolf" when he got bored and wanted to see some action. The town's people would come running out to come and investigate and found no risk to the flock. After a while people began to ignore him and the inevitable happened, a real wolf showed up.
The questions the media should be asking:
1) what is being done to further research the apparent "cluster" of large asteroids coming inside the earth-moon distance [1 Lunar distance (LD)] between 2026 and 2030
2) What is being done to research the number of >300m near earth asteroids listed as "Lost"
There are many good things happening in asteroid research. Professional scientists are investing in new surveys, Panstarrs Survey is now fully operational. Amateur Astronomers regularly collaborate with professionals and do amazing follow up work. The gap in the southern sky above 30 degrees south declination left by the closure of the E12 Survey at Siding Spring has been picked up by, Panstarrs reaching further south, a repurposing of the WISE Space telescope, the Sonear Observatory in Brazil, the new ISON-South telescope, and the amateur astronomers who use iTelescope.net's Siding Spring Observatory telescopes.
So let's not cry wolf, let's educate and understand, let's progress our knowledge and support the effort to protect our home by getting positively involved. I am certain there will be more than one "end of the world" party on Friday April 13th 2029 when asteroid Apophis (2nd on the Sentry Risk Table) misses Earth by about 200 thousand kilometers and streaks across the sky as a naked eye object. You will be able to pull out the deck chair and pop the bubbly, safe in the knowledge that scientists that you funded have done the math, and you'll be able to relax and enjoy the spectacle.
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4531https://www.nasa.gov/content/asteroid-data-hunter-challenge-0http://www.asteroidmission.org/get-involved/target-asteroids/
Hi folks, Welcome to the Carnival of Space this week in a very busy week. As its a public holiday in Australia today, for the Queens Birthday, I was able to clear the decks and participate in Fraser Cain's Virtual Star Party and host the Carnival today, before craming 5 days work into 4 days. Next weekend I'll be doing a live Citizen Science session in one of the Famous Melbourne Laneways, and we'll be doing a live cross to Dr Pamela Gay's CosmoQuest-Hangout-a-Thon.
So its on with the Carnival! (UPDATED: I just realized I got the dates confused and The Urban Astronomer was supposed to host the carnival this week - deepest apologies for jumping the gun)
A short discussion of galaxy IC3418, which is moving at fast speed through the Virgo Cluster of galaxies. The hot gas in the cluster is stripping out the gas from the little galaxy, leaving it barren of the material needed to form new generations of stars. The stripped out gas is being observed as a tail behind the galaxy, visible in ultraviolet light. Checkout Andrew's blog for more details about this amazing photo.
Thanks to app developers, touch screen devices such as the iPhone and iPad have become wonderful tools for those interested in astronomy and space exploration. This post discusses two especially beautiful iPad apps, Luminos and Cosmographia.
A few days ago, Everyday Spacer's first alliance for Project #1 was born. Everyday Spacer, and the good folks at Photos to Space, have agreed to bring you a ‘badge’ as a reward for certain accomplishments in the upcoming membership site.
Mars Express celebrates ten years at Mars with new global maps. I can't wait till we can go there and use GPS and the above apps to find our way around.
Image Credit: ESA
The Chandra Blog brings us a great article about Transforming Science Into Sound.
Brian sees through the slight of hand of a magicians trick with mirrors that can make orbiting satellites invisible across broad optical spectrum.
Brian also stumps the pending announcement of a 7 blade razor with a report on the ultimate upsizing!
The technology exists to develop a ground based telescope with a 77 meter (250 foot) mirror at lower cost if it is used for narrow field study. It could do a survey of earth sized planets out to 60 light years The Colossus Telescope, a high-resolution, 77-meter multiple-mirror giant instrument, will have the ability to directly image the heat generated by other civilizations on planets orbiting stars near us. Innovative Optics, Ltd. offers proprietary solutions that will reduce the production cost of large optics by 10 to 20 times – and the production time by a significantly greater factor – compared with current techniques. Production cost per square meter of a Live Mirror drops to less than $20,000, letting IO undercut competitors while still realizing a significant profit margin in a market that currently pays more than $400,000 per square meter for a traditional mirror.
Ian Musgrave from Astroblogger has been following the progress of the incredibly unique Comet Panstarrs and its passage over three days.
Image Credit: Innovative Optics
Finally from this blog AARTScope.blogspot.com I leave you with a great image of the passing Asteroid (285263) 1998 QE2, from a live Google Plus hangout this week.
Image Credit: Peter Lake, AARTScope Blog
So that's it from this week's Carnival of Space.
The Carnival of Space is a community of interest blog carnival bringing together the best and brightest Astronomy & Space Blogs at a single point in space and time (commonly referred to as a web address) each week. Previous episodes can be found here. If you run an astronomy or space science blog you can contact carnivalofspace @ gmail.com to be added to the editorial circulation list.
Potentially hazardous asteroid 99942 Apophis passed earth this week allowing astronomers a window of opportunity to get some radar data (highly accurate) on it pass.
Astronomers from NASA, JPL and MPC announced that Apophis will miss the earth in 2036, something they were unable to definitely say previously.
I captured these images from the new iT30 0.5m Planewave at iTelescope.net's new SSO observatory.
Also there is a little bonus at the end of the video with a scan code for a free download of my signature shot of the Swan Nebula. Enjoy!
Also please vote in my poll on how bright will Comet ISON be in 2013/2014. (see right hand side bar). I am going to try and up the level of interaction and rate of posts this year, as I am getting so much great feedback from you all.
Welcome to the Carnival of Space where we feature the very best of Space and Astronomy blogs each week. Also, I thought I'd share with you the latest fancy internet widget from Infomous [above]. Check it out, but make sure you come back and read our great line up today, with lots of great Solar System articles, and entries from a number of Continents. As it hosted from Australia this week - lets start in Sydney.
Astropixie this week covers the Astronomy conference in Sydney "Supernovae and their host galaxies". The event was sponsored by the AAO Australian Astronomical Observatory and the CSIRO. Amanda provides overviews of the conference presentations, top of mind was the very recent Supernova in M51 and the methods of observation required after such events.
At the Next Big Future, true to form, Brian covers all the stuff our grandchildren will take for granted. Keith Henson's studies of space-based solar power issues. Henson recently published a proposal to reduce the cost of getting payload to orbit by orders of magnitude . In an interview with Sander Olson, Henson describes using skylon rocket planes to release payloads at high altitudes. Are launch costs of $100 per Kilo possible - Henson thinks so!
NASA Engineer John Chapman has an aneutronic fusion reactor scheme, a commercially available benchtop laser starts the reaction. A beam with energy on the order of 2 x 10^18 watts per square centimeter, pulse frequencies up to 75 megahertz, and wavelengths between 1 and 10 micrometers is aimed at a two-layer, 20-centimeter-diameter target. Each pulse of the laser should generate roughly 100 000 particles. Read the article and find out just how you might generate 1 Megawatt per second.
Moon Express, Inc. (MoonEx) is targeting mining the moon. CTO Barney Pell gave a talk about the vision recently. Sounds like its only a matter of time before we have protesters throwing themselves in front of space tractors. ;-)
Speaking of Moons.....Jupiter is just showing off. The Urban Astronomer reports on the discovery of two more Jovian satellites taking the total to 65! That's enough for whole inter-lunar football league, with enough left over for an Ice Hockey league! I can see it now....the Europa Enforcers! Seriously though, the new moons are S/2010 J1 and S/2010 J2 and are unusual, so you have to visit the blog to find out why.
Still on Moons, Enceladus - now there is a place you could play some serious Icehockey! The Meridiani Journal looks into further evidence that salty oceans exist beneath the surface feeding its famous Geysers. [Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute]
Onto Mars now, and Vintage Space reports on Robert Zubrin and the Mars Society suggesting that we are more ready to go to Mars now than we were to go to the moon in 1961. A closer look comparing lunar readiness then and Mars readiness now suggests that maybe we aren't.
Enter these co-ordinates into your Stargate: SAO + NASM = FETTSS @ SI, or you can just go to the Chandra Blog for a great report on the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and National Air and Space Museum's "From Earth to the Solar System" - a stunning photographic journey through the solar system. Ameé Salois even discusses iceskating on Europa (See... you thought I was being silly before!).
Photo Credit: Megan Watzke
The Panstarrs Blog covers some of their science strategies. Harvard postdoctoral researcher Darin Ragozzine describes the search for icy bodies in distant reaches of the solar system using Pan-STARRS1.
On a side note to this, the ubiquitous platform for Citizen Science - Zooniverse has added IceHunters to search for a suitable Kuiper Belt object for the New Horizions mission to go to after it passes Pluto. (So if you are bored with the ice at your local rink ..... alright enough on the Ice hockey analogies already!!)
The big news of the week, which made the mainstream media, was the close passage of tiny asteroid 2011 MD which passed at a very close distance of 1.8 earth Radii. Astroblogger provides commentary and discusses some of the images and techniques for capturing the near earth visitor.
Ian O'Neil writing for the Discovery News asks the "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger question" protesting that he wished that 2011 MD had hit us, yes he's serious. He goes to great lengths to explain why - perhaps then there would be more serious funding from governments to address the problem.
Just in from our Spanish Desk: Vega 0.0 reports on the co-ordinates and skychart for observing Comet Elenin in October. Elenin is now a tough assignment as it is only about 30 degrees above the horizion at sunset.
Indian space entrepreneur, Susmita Mohanty gave a talk on the end of the Shuttle era at the American Center in Mumbai, India. Pradeep's Blog Pradx takes a look at the talk and the response from the Mumbai crowd. Thanks Pradeep, great to get some local news from Mumbai.
Weirdwarp poses the question, "What could an alien civilisation be able to do"? Well, as we have not found any alien civilisations then everything is guesswork based on the laws of physics and our experiences here on earth. This could be completely wrong or it could be completely right or it could be somewhere in between. Only Chris can stack rank an alien civilization!
Finally I leave you with my own video of 2011 MD as we wrap up this Solar System oriented webisode of Carnival of Space - 204.
The Carnival of Space is a community of interest blog carnival bringing together the best and brightest Astronomy & Space Blogs at a single point in space and time (commonly referred to as a web address) each week. Previous episodes can be found here. If you run an astronomy or space science blog you can contact carnivalofspace@gmail.com to be added to the editorial circulation list.
Its been a little while since I have chased asteroids, but with the new Focal reducer I thought I'd put in some time as there were 60 confirmations up on the MPC Confirmation page.
I was looking for something around Mag 21 to test the scope out now its F/4.4.
P100ZPJ looked like a good target as it was pretty high in the sky and the last couple of frames I lost as they were moon affected. I did manage to stack 6x300 sec subs into this fine shot. Residuals were good and its between mag 20 and 21. Offically it was supposed to be Mag 21.2 but Spacewatch II got it at mag 20.5 as well at about the same time.
