{"id":7221,"date":"2011-11-06T01:00:02","date_gmt":"2011-11-06T11:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/?p=7221"},"modified":"2012-12-28T14:41:27","modified_gmt":"2012-12-29T00:41:27","slug":"asteroid-flyby","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/?p=7221","title":{"rendered":"Asteroid Flyby"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We are going to get buzzed Tuesday.  A reasonably large asteroid will pass quite close to the Earth, well inside lunar orbit.  <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/2005_YU55\" target=\"_blank\">Asteroid 2005 YU55<\/a> will pass 325,000 km (202,000 mi) from the Earth.  This is a good sized object, about 400m (1300ft) in diameter, large enough to create significant damage if it were to collide.  We do know that the object will safely miss, this time.  It is an object to track carefully.  Data from this encounter and a future encounter with Venus in 2029 will set YU55 up for another encounter with Earth in 2041.  Again we believe it will miss, but it will be close.<\/p>\n<p>Keck 2 will be observing YU55 using adaptive optics and NIRC2 in an attempt to get high resolution imagery of the asteroid.  It is quite convenient that this interesting asteroid is passing close to Earth, it will be in easy reach of our best astronomical instrumentation.  I suspect I will be spending a little time in Keck 2 remote operations Tuesday night to get a look for myself.<\/p>\n<p><!--more-->For anyone trying to observe the asteroid with a small telescope, it will present a fair challenge.  It will be well placed for observation on the evening of Nov. 8th, high in the sky in the constellation Pegasus.  Finding it will require a small telescope as it estimated to be only about 11th magnitude.  You will also need a precision ephemeris with coordinates every few minutes as it will be moving very quickly across the sky.<\/p>\n<p>To get an accurate ephemeris requires use of software than can account for many different factors.  With a close object you need to account for the observers position, simple geocentric calculations are not accurate enough.  The <a href=\"http:\/\/ssd.jpl.nasa.gov\/horizons.cgi\" target=\"_blank\">NASA Horizons ephemeris generator<\/a> is capable of doing the job.  Below I have included an ephemeris for the night of Nov. 8th (Nov 9th UT) generated for Mauna Kea.  This should be reasonably accurate for any place in the Hawaiian Islands.  Times and dates are UT, so subtract 10 hours for HST, thus the table begins at 19:00HST (7pm)&#8230;<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<pre> Date        Time      R.A.         Dec.        Az.      El.<br \/>\n 2011-Nov-09 05:00  m  23 09 05.55 +18 34 00.8  90.5601  71.3475<br \/>\n 2011-Nov-09 05:15  m  23 14 12.25 +18 42 05.3  91.0621  73.6988<br \/>\n 2011-Nov-09 05:30  m  23 19 07.78 +18 49 18.7  91.6712  76.0910<br \/>\n 2011-Nov-09 05:45  m  23 23 52.49 +18 55 44.8  92.4456  78.5230<br \/>\n 2011-Nov-09 06:00  m  23 28 26.72 +19 01 26.9  93.5106  80.9931<br \/>\n 2011-Nov-09 06:15  m  23 32 50.83 +19 06 28.7  95.1903  83.4984<br \/>\n 2011-Nov-09 06:30  m  23 37 05.18 +19 10 53.2  98.6524  86.0321<br \/>\n 2011-Nov-09 06:45  m  23 41 10.15 +19 14 43.4 113.3075  88.5463<br \/>\n 2011-Nov-09 07:00  t  23 45 06.11 +19 18 02.2 247.9758  88.6123<br \/>\n 2011-Nov-09 07:15  m  23 48 53.43 +19 20 52.0 263.7716  86.0367<br \/>\n 2011-Nov-09 07:30  m  23 52 32.47 +19 23 15.4 267.3929  83.3695<br \/>\n 2011-Nov-09 07:45  m  23 56 03.58 +19 25 14.6 269.1848  80.6634<br \/>\n 2011-Nov-09 08:00  m  23 59 27.12 +19 26 51.6 270.3734  77.9258<br \/>\n 2011-Nov-09 08:15  m  00 02 43.43 +19 28 08.4 271.2946  75.1597<br \/>\n 2011-Nov-09 08:30  m  00 05 52.83 +19 29 06.8 272.0779  72.3671<br \/>\n 2011-Nov-09 08:45  m  00 08 55.63 +19 29 48.3 272.7837  69.5498<br \/>\n 2011-Nov-09 09:00  m  00 11 52.15 +19 30 14.6 273.4441  66.7091<br \/>\n 2011-Nov-09 09:15  m  00 14 42.68 +19 30 27.0 274.0781  63.8467<br \/>\n 2011-Nov-09 09:30  m  00 17 27.50 +19 30 26.7 274.6973  60.9638<br \/>\n 2011-Nov-09 09:45  m  00 20 06.87 +19 30 15.0 275.3097  58.0619<br \/>\n 2011-Nov-09 10:00  m  00 22 41.06 +19 29 53.0 275.9210  55.1422<br \/>\n 2011-Nov-09 10:15  m  00 25 10.31 +19 29 21.7 276.5354  52.2062<br \/>\n 2011-Nov-09 10:30  m  00 27 34.85 +19 28 42.1 277.1563  49.2551<br \/>\n 2011-Nov-09 10:45  m  00 29 54.91 +19 27 54.9 277.7864  46.2902<br \/>\n 2011-Nov-09 11:00  m  00 32 10.69 +19 27 01.0 278.4283  43.3127<br \/>\n 2011-Nov-09 11:15  m  00 34 22.40 +19 26 01.1 279.0842  40.3240<br \/>\n 2011-Nov-09 11:30  m  00 36 30.23 +19 24 55.9 279.7563  37.3254<br \/>\n 2011-Nov-09 11:45  m  00 38 34.35 +19 23 46.0 280.4466  34.3182<br \/>\n 2011-Nov-09 12:00  m  00 40 34.94 +19 22 32.0 281.1575  31.3037<br \/>\n 2011-Nov-09 12:15  m  00 42 32.16 +19 21 14.5 281.8911  28.2832<br \/>\n 2011-Nov-09 12:30  m  00 44 26.16 +19 19 53.9 282.6497  25.2582<br \/>\n 2011-Nov-09 12:45  m  00 46 17.08 +19 18 30.7 283.4360  22.2301<br \/>\n 2011-Nov-09 13:00  m  00 48 05.06 +19 17 05.4 284.2526  19.2005<br \/>\n 2011-Nov-09 13:15  m  00 49 50.22 +19 15 38.2 285.1026  16.1709<br \/>\n 2011-Nov-09 13:30  m  00 51 32.69 +19 14 09.6 285.9891  13.1429<br \/>\n 2011-Nov-09 13:45  m  00 53 12.58 +19 12 39.9 286.9158  10.1185<br \/>\n 2011-Nov-09 14:00  m  00 54 50.00 +19 11 09.4 287.8867   7.0996<br \/>\n 2011-Nov-09 14:15  m  00 56 25.04 +19 09 38.5 288.9062   4.0882<br \/>\n 2011-Nov-09 14:30  m  00 57 57.80 +19 08 07.2 289.9792   1.0866<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We are going to get buzzed Tuesday. A reasonably large asteroid will pass quite close to the Earth, well inside lunar orbit. Asteroid 2005 YU55 will pass 325,000 km (202,000 mi) from the Earth. This is a good sized object, about 400m (1300ft) in diameter, large enough to create significant damage if it were to &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/?p=7221\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Asteroid Flyby&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[331,41],"tags":[793,791,792],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7221"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7221"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7221\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}