First in response to some questions some may be asking, we will not be open tonight to see the asteroid flyby. This because of clouds and snow predictions. The asteroid passes close by the earth in the southern hemisphere and we won't see it when it is brighter and closer to the earth. The asteroid will only be about magnitude 11 which is faint and requires a large telescope of 8 inches or more in mirror or front glass objective size. It will look like a very faint star and be moving. Because of the poor weather and tracking difficulties it's unlikely we would catch a glimpse of it between mostly cloudy skies and with snow, it's just not worth the time to sit outside and not really see anything.
It's better to watch the NASA live feed showing the asteroid from a clear location, than to sit inside a cold observatory and look at a telescope that can't see anything due to bad weather tonight.
The following is not a link to the NASA website, I'll include it in another post.
This is a link to a video of the explosion from a meteo/meteorite that hit Russia today.
This Meteor or meteorite blew up in the atmosphere. Many including the Europeon Space Agency claim this has no relationship to the asteroid flyby, because it happened about a million kilometers ahead of the actual asteroid. And it likely came in from a different trajectory.
There of course could be a slight chance that this meteorite was related to the asteroid, sounds a lot like some sci fi movie script, doesn't it.
There are thousands of objects, actually many more likely millions flying around in our solar system. They are mostly small items piece of rock or ice often left over from a comet and they often enter into the earth's atmosphere causing a bright light as the meteor burns up in the upper atmosphere. Almost every other day high in space above the atmosphere a meteor large enough to setup a 1 megaton explosion blows up. These are so high and so small even though they blow up we don't notice them. We may see a shooting star. If it travels all the way to the ground it will perhaps leave pieces or even form a small crater. We actually have dust from many meteorites called micrometeorite dust that covers the planet. This dust accumulates and becomes mixed with the soils, and also washed into the oceans and rivers over time with the natural decay and erosion of the soil.
There is of course a slight chance, maybe a very small one, and more would have to be known about the trajectory of the Russian meteorite to know if it's related to the asteroid. It's seems like a interesting circumstance that this meteorite would fall a day before the close flyby.
Objects in space can be bound to each other in gravity and fly by in pairs, if they are large objects and have enough gravity to have some other object enter into a stable orbit. The 150 foot asteroid, doesn't have enough gravity to have some small rock very far away bound to it with gravity. So how could the two be related?
If the asteroid was created many years ago from some larger item being struck or broken apart, it could perhaps be flying in an orbit and some other piece might be flying along in almost the same orbit. It's probably unlikely that a small piece would be flying along the same orbital path, but we have situations where many objects get trapped in the same orbit by a strong gravitational field, the rings of Saturn would be an example of many objects in a fairly close orbit, but this is around a large object. So imagine that this or some other collision caused a chunk of the asteroid that was smaller to be flying around and somehow, almost by a kind of miracle, this piece happened to be in essentially the same orbit. But it would have to be traveling in this case ahead of the path of the asteroid and fly slightly differently of course. It being smaller may be affected slightly differently than the asteroid, being perhaps a piece of it flying ahead of it. The biggest problem with this theory however is that smaller piece, would be traveling ahead of the asteroid and flying in pretty much the same orbital path. The Asteroid is going to fly by us from below and behind the earth from the south pole it will fly up and past the earth, traveling in an inclined orbit up toward what we would see as the little dipper and Polaris. An object taking that path would hit the southern part of the globe, which is something like Africa, India or Perhaps Australia, the Indian ocean or Antarctica. The meteor traveling in front of 2012 DA14 in order to hit Russia would have to fly past the equator and curve and fly into the earth, being bent like a gravitational cue ball to hit in the northern hemisphere. It's unlikely that this happened. If the piece of rock was smaller, which we know the Russian strike was, it might be deflected by the earths gravity more, but remember to be deflected more it would have to be lighter and traveling at a slower speed to be curved more by gravity. If it's hitting us at 30,000 miles an hour, that's a lot of speed and velocity. A faster bullet travels flatter through gravity on earth in the atmosphere. A faster object traveling by the earth or near the earth will deflect less if it's traveling faster. Objects of course can speed up by gravity, but the earths atmosphere will slow them down.
Until we know more about it's path, we could not say where it was and how it entered the atmosphere. I have doubts that it would be from the Asteroid and deflect into Russia. And knowing the path, the ESA would probably have a much better idea of the possibility of that happening than I would.
But to play the devils advocate for a moment and say now could this happen. Well a smaller rock would be deflected more. The earth is traveling at a high speed so if it was lying in the path of the earth it could be struck by the earth and it moving slowly could be something the earth ran into. If the earth ran into it and it was an After midnight meteor, then it would likely be something from a different direction than the Asteroid and unrelated. What if it was floating by and in advance of the asteroid and off to the side and passed the earth a night or two before? Would it be in a path in front of the earth and the earth run into it? The answer is no, it would be traveling faster than the earth and in an inclined orbit, so it would have passed the earth and kept moving along a slightly different path of the asteroid. This is difficult to explain. If the path was from south to north and it was traveling in a kind of fast curve and came up from around the earth's south pole and swung into the earth, with a curved trajectory, it might be from the same path or nearly the same path.
One of the things that makes asteroids and minor planets different from major ones, is minor planets cannot clear the path and obit of other material that is floating around in the same orbital ring or path. 2012 Da14 is not a large asteroid or planet, so it definitely would not be pulling in other particles and material rocks and debris that would be in it's orbit. So it could have other objects in it's orbital path in front or behind it. Not gravitationally bound but circumstantially in the same path, kind of like pellets from a shotgun blast flying in the same direction.
It's important to realize however that this is a fairly stable orbit and close to the same as the orbit of the earth, so this object has been flying around for a long time. This means, as as pointed out to me by a fellow Faac member, a Tim Campbell, it's probably not composed of ice. If it was the ice would have melted long ago. So 2012 da14 is probably a solid object. And recall that gravity and velocity will be effected by the other objects. What is the chance of a small object flying around and taking the same path of gravity as other larger objects? It may not be very likely.
Both objects are rather small and both are without a lot of mass, so there is a chance that they could be in the same orbit. It's very slight.
It will be interesting to find out if more analysis can be used to prove the Russian meteorite is not related to 2012 DA14. Over the next few weeks we should hear a lot more about this.
It's a good thing that they were only hit by this small meteorite, had they been hit with 2012da14, the results would have been more like being hit with an atomic bomb.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/02/15/stunning-amateur-videos-of-the-russian-meteorite-explosion/
As you can see in the video link above, the sounds from the sonic booms were still pretty scary and of course they cause damage. Every boom represents another Mach or speed multiple past the speed of sound. There were several booms, it was traveling a lot faster than Mach 2.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment