Sunday 30 December 2012

2012 DA14

It's quite ironic that one of the highlights of the 2013 Astronomy calendar falls on the birthday of Galileo Galilei and it is also surprising that the 'end is nigh' gang have not picked up on the 2012 DA14 asteroid that is heading our way February 15th next year.
The 130,000 tonne, 45m wide asteroid is due to fly past Earth at a distance of just 22,500 km which is closer than any other of its size in recorded history.
'Having a 45m space rock pass under 30,000km from the Earth is an incredibly near miss in astronomical terms' said a spokesman from NASA although he emphasised that there is no danger for us, NASA have an impact risk of 0 for 2012 DA14, although our satellites could face a direct hit as the asteroid is set to travel between the Earth and our communication satellites.
Although the asteroid will be too faint to see with the naked eye, it will be visible through binoculars or a telescope but i fully expect the more excitable amongst us to have it bringing about the death of us all before then.

1 comment:

Sher Shayari said...

I don't understand why do people speculate things and why do people come to a conclusion those scientists are providing "end of the world news"...... They are just providing you an information... The news just say it may travel closer to Planet Earth...

The Last impact event was Tunguska blast... and above all, thousands of meteors hit the Planet every day...Most are the size of a grain of rice, or the size basketball or smaller... Once a week Earth is hit by a rock the size of Car, once every few months size of a house... Every few hundred years bigger things... The vast majority of these burn up in the atmosphere... and lots of object go into the inner solar system without colliding with any planets...