Dear Listees,
Thought I'd pass along to anyone interested in seeing a typical Hammer
of God asteroid (no, it is not called Kali, but it really does have a
devil of an orbital period: 666 days), in the form of Chinese
discovered potentially threatening asteroid (136849) 1998 CS1 (That's
CS1, not CSI :)). This asteroid is likely well over 1 kilometer in
diameter and will be paying us a quite "close" visit on January 17 at
about 5:00PM London time, when it will be about 4.35 million kilometers
away (2.7 million miles) from Earth. That's about 11 Lunar Distances
(11 times the distance from the Earth to the Moon).
For comparison, 4179 Toutatis, which made for a great deal of drama on
29 Sep 2004, is about twice the diameter of 136849 1998 CS1 and passed
by Earth at 4 LD's. It was supposedly 10th magnitude, 5 times
brighter, but was not as optimally placed to see for many of us.
Due to 136849's phase, it will actually be brightest tomorrow night
(sometime between 10 PM and 12:30 AM) or whenever is just before
Moonrise if you are in the northern hemisphere north of at least 15
degrees latitude or so. If you are South of that you need to put up
with the fairly bright Moon but can try to look at it starting a couple
of hours after Moonrise 'til dawn.
I think I'll give it a shot if conditions are ok, since it would be
nice to see something this big, this close - about
the same level of
difficulty as Toutatis was. For me timing critical as it will barely
rise 15 degrees above the horizon when the Gibbous Moonriserises a
little before midnight local time. But if you are a Hamburger
(Germany) or Juneauean (Alaska), you can observe for at least two hours
before Moonrise preferably in thermal knickers...
The predicted visual magnitude will be 12.25, well within the range of
amateur telescopes. It will be moving against the starry background at
about 40 arcseconds per minute which is a third more that the diameter
of Jupiter, for comparison, and a very comfortable speed for
observation. It's roughly between the Big Dipper of Ursa Major (the
Plough) and Leo.
For statical thoughts, anything coming within 11.31 LD's of Earth is
ROUGHLY about one half-millionth a 'chance' to hit Earth by just
looking at cross sectional area, and Earth occupies about one three
hundred and twenty millionth of the volume of the sphere centered on
Earth with a radius of 11.31 LD. And to think a LD (Lunar Distance)
makes it seem so familiar and close! In 2080, it will pass by at 9.4
LD's if all goes according to plan...after a few close ones with Venus,
too...
BTW today, the STARDUST spacecraft just passed Earth a couple of hours
ago at 0.023 LD's, I think!
Here's the orbit of 136849:
http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=136849;orb=1
Here´re the discoverers:
http://ww
w.bao.ac.cn/bao/station/xl/index-e.html
Best wishes and Great Health,
Doug
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