378E-414-Enormous Visitor

Without additional data, the true nature of the rapidly northward moving point of light my Catalina Sky Survey teammate Carson Fuls had just discovered would have remained a mystery. Fortunately, this new object was tracked by telescopes in both Arizona and New Mexico. These data were used to calculate it's orbit around the Sun, estimate it's size, and give it the name 2017 UX5. When Carson first spotted this enormous 1,200 foot diameter space rock it was more than 30 million miles away traveling in our direction at 10.7 mi/s. It's orbit and that of the Earth's nearly intersect and at the closest point they are about two and one half times the Moon's distance from us apart. An asteroid the size of 2017 UX5 impacts the Earth every 76,000 years or so. According to the impact calculator developed at Purdue University and the Imperial College of London if 2017 UK5 is made of porous rock and came in at an angle of 45 degrees, it would start to break into pieces at an altitude of 41 miles and upon reaching the surface would create a crater 2.2 miles in diameter and 5/8 of a mile deep in sedimentary rock. The results 20 miles away from impact would be that of a 6.4 Richter Scale magnitude Earth quake followed by 176 mph air wind blast which would blow down 90% of the trees and collapse wood frame buildings. Fortunately asteroid hunters have not discovered any object like Carson's discovery with our number on it.

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918-Auroras from Space

The northern lights or Aurora Borealis have fascinated humans throughout the ages. Today aurora watching is a multimillion dollar industry in places like Alaska, Canada, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Green...

25 Syys 2min

407E-448-Two PHA's

The large dangerous asteroids that we don't know about are what keep asteroid hunters going to the telescope.

22 Syys 2min

917-Space Dust

As the Earth orbits the Sun at 18.5 mi/s it sweeps up about 100 tons of micrometeorites and space dust every day of which some 14 tons eventually makes it to the ground. You can even find some of thes...

18 Syys 2min

406E-447-Nuking An Asteroid

Tonight, even though the chances are extremely slim, an asteroid hunter could find a sizable asteroid on a collision course with planet Earth. If we have decades warning, the potential impactor's arri...

15 Syys 2min

916-Past Glory

When accurately recorded historical observations do not agree with what we what we see today it is often very rewarding to find out why. In modern telescopes we see Theta Eridani to a be pair separate...

11 Syys 2min

405E-446-Asteroid Homestead

In the future one can envision a space mining family boarding a descendent of the SpaceX Falcon Heavy Launch Vehicle for a trip into low Earth orbit. A few hundred miles above the Earth's surface they...

8 Syys 2min

915-Raining Comets

The comets we observe generally start out as icy dirty snowballs of frozen gases like water and frozen carbon dioxide in the Oort cloud. If recent scientific analysis is correct, we are now witnessing...

4 Syys 2min