Near-Earth objects and close calls

It's Christmas Eve tonight. This is a view of the large fireball that flowed at 1:59 on December 25, 2014, with a camera pointing from Fuji to the southeastern sky. A shock wave sound was observed in Shizuoka prefecture, and a meteorite fell into the sea near Izu Oshima. It may have been a Christmas present given by Santa.

I'll bet five buck's its related to (2020 YM1) or couple of other NEO's in the neighborhood.

Huge fireball reported over southern China



 
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Huge fireball reported over southern China early Wednesday morning. Locals reported hearing a huge bang. It apparently lasted for around 3 minutes and was detected by the regional earthquake centre, and they believe it may have reached the ground.

According to the Watchers website:

This is by far the largest recorded fireball event of the year, the largest since December 18, 2018, and the 15th largest on record. For China, this is the largest fireball event since 1988.
 
For interest, The Economist has put out a video 'The World in 2021: five stories to watch out for' on YouTube

The relevant section is from 14:40 and describes a planned NASA experiment to change the momentum of a small asteroid orbiting a larger asteroid. It's possibly a programmed bias, but I've always been suspicious of people who are describing a very serious thing, but look like they're smiling at the same time.

 
A newly-discovered asteroid made a close approach to Earth on December 28, 2020.

Posted by Teo Blašković on December 29, 2020
 
Regarding fire ball around West Virginia on 12/27 - this was posted in another thread but posting here since relevant:


Fireball in W. Va?

Now look here....
arrow_up SOMETHING THEY'RE NOT TELLING US? Fireball Reports
All Countries
Nov 27, 2020 - Dec 28, 2020
with sound
with fragmentation
All types
All Event
Event IDP
ending only
Reports found: 3885 in the last 30 days

Noted on pg 4 Nashville TN 12/25 6:30.....MZ


Although, AMS is stating it’s a contrail lit up by the sun 🤔 Could be some classic damage control - “Nothing to see here, folks...”

 
And just for comparison, here’s a YT vid of a plane and it’s sun lit contrails:


It’s plausible the W. Virginia event could have been a contrail, but when zoomed in, based on the angle and trajectory I would expect to see a plane in front on the contrails. So, where’s the plane? 🤔
 
PETER DOCKRILL 22 DECEMBER 2020
In 2008, something unique fell out of the sky over Sudan, exploding into fragments across the vast, arid expanses of the Nubian Desert.
This hurtling object from above became known as Almahata Sitta: a collection of roughly 600 meteorite fragments, painstakingly recovered by researchers, and taking its name – 'Station Six' – from a nearby train station.

What was unique about Almahata Sitta is that it represented something unprecedented in astronomy: the first time an asteroid impact was successfully predicted in advance by scientists.

Ever since, the splinters of that asteroid – called 2008 TC3 – have been analysed by researchers, looking for chemical clues to the origins of this mysterious, far-flung visitor.

Now, a new study fleshes out that intriguing back-story.

010 meteorite crystals x

The AhS 202 shard. (Muawia Shaddad)


By looking at the splinters, it can tell us about 2008 TC3, which in turn can tell us about where 2008 TC3 itself came from – like an astronomical chain of nested Matryoshka dolls.

"Our surprising result suggests the existence of a large, water-rich parent body," says first author and planetary geologist Vicky Hamilton of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado.

In the new work, Hamilton and fellow researchers didn't have much to work with, analysing just the tiniest of slivers of this remarkable space rock.

"We were allocated a 50-milligram sample of Almahata Sitta to study," Hamilton explains. "We mounted and polished the tiny shard and used an infrared microscope to examine its composition."

The spectral analysis revealed something the scientists didn't expect to find. Inside the shard – a fragment called AhS 202 – an extremely rare form of hydrated crystals was found, known as amphibole.

This mineral type requires prolonged bouts of extreme heat and pressure to form, of a kind not usually thought to be possible in carbonaceous chondrite (CC) meteorites.

010 meteorite crystals

Micrograph showing amphibole crystals, in orange. (NASA/USRA/Lunar and Planetary Institute)


The implications suggest that 2008 TC3 most likely once belonged to a much, much larger body – something so large in fact, that it would virtually be in the same class as Ceres: the dwarf planet, which represents the largest known object in the Solar System's main asteroid belt, in between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.

"Most CC parent bodies are thought to be less than 100 km in diameter, and thus would not be sufficiently large to produce the range of pressure and temperature conditions represented by the mineral assemblage in AhS 202," the authors explain in their paper.

"As such, it is our interpretation that the original parent body of AhS 202 was probably an unknown object, potentially Ceres-sized (~640–1,800 km in diameter under the most likely conditions)."

While this mysterious, giant asteroid is thought to no longer exist, the fact that it once inhabited our Solar System suggests that more of its kind could potentially have done the same, even though we haven't found evidence of these large, water-rich bodies in recovered meteorite fragments prior to 2008 TC3.

In the same way that asteroids Ryugu and Bennu are revealing some surprises in composition that differ from most known meteorites, 2008 TC3's manifold splinters are proving that there's more to space rocks than current hypotheses can fully explain.

"We are not proposing that AhS 202 is a spectral analogue for Bennu or Ryugu; rather, AhS 202 is a serendipitous source of information about early Solar System materials that are not represented by whole meteorites in our collections," the researchers conclude.

"The difference between its mineralogy and that of known CC meteorites suggests that unique samples like AhS 202 (and xenoliths in other, non-CC meteorites) could be crucial missing links in our understanding of the diversity of parent asteroids."
The findings are reported in Nature Astronomy.

Reference:
2008 TC3 few hours before the impact
•Oct 8, 2008 / 0:31
A tiny asteroid 2008 TC3 was discovered by astronomers a day before it entered the atmosphere in Northern Sudan and exploded. The video shows animated motion between the stars few hours before the impact. Images taken from the Črni Vrh Observatory in Slovenia with a 60 cm telescope and a CCD camera. http://www.observatorij.org

Hmmm 🤔sulfur dioxide (SO2)..?



Close Approaches
9:00 PM · Dec 29, 2020·
2020 XZ4 :: 5.39 LD
2020 YO1 :: 20.41 LD
2020 YO1 :: 20.41 LD
2020 XB4 :: 58.62 LD
2017 UP2 :: 70.87 LD

Near Earth Asteroids
Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs) are space rocks larger than approximately 100m that can come closer to Earth than 0.05 AU. None of the known PHAs is on a collision course with our planet, although astronomers are finding new ones all the time.
On December 30, 2020 there were 2037 potentially hazardous asteroids.
 
A newly-discovered asteroid made a close approach to Earth on January 1, 2021.

Posted by Teo Blašković on January 3, 2021

 
A newly-discovered asteroid made a close approach to Earth on January 3, 2021.

Posted by Teo Blašković on January 4, 2021

 
藤井大地 @dfuji1
It looks like a long-path meteor that flowed at 23:02 on January 9, 2021 was seen with a wide-angle camera facing the high sky north of Fuji. It wasn't bright enough to be called a fireball, but it was a long-path meteor that kept shining for more than 5 seconds. It was a remnant of the Quadrantids meteor shower, which peaked before dawn on January 4.


AsteroidTracker @AsteroidTracker
10 asteroids making their closest approach near #Earth today! details AsteroidToday #AsteroidToday #asteroid #space

Kacper Wierzchoś @WierzchosKacper 9:44 AM · Jan 8, 2021
Robert Evans, visual supernova hunter. He discovered 42 supernovae between 1981 and 2008, the most of any visual astronomer in history. Note the how he put the designations of his prey on the telescope. Image by Roger Ressmeyer/Corbis




MISAO Project
Weekly Information about Bright Comets (2021 Jan. 2: North)
Updated on January 6, 2021

Very small Apollo-class Asteroid
2015 NU13 It will pass by Earth on Jan. 9, 2021.
  • Categorized as a Apollo-class Asteroid
    Comparable in size to the U.S. Capitol building
  • Will pass within 5,650,324 km of Earth in 2021
  • Classified as a Near Earth Asteroid (NEA)
  • Classified as a Potentially Hazardous Asteroid (PHA)
  • See orbit simulation

Overview

2015 NU13 is a very small asteroid whose orbit crosses the orbit of Earth. NASA JPL has classified 2015 NU13 as a "Potentially Hazardous Asteroid" due to its predicted close pass(es) with Earth.

2015 NU13 orbits the sun every 904 days (2.48 years), coming as close as 0.75 AU and reaching as far as 2.91 AU from the sun. Based on its brightness and the way it reflects light, 2015 NU13 is probably between 0.305 to 0.682 kilometers in diameter, making it larger than 90% of asteroids but tiny compared to large asteroids, very roughly comparable in size to the U.S. Capitol building.



·Cosmic Bot
6:18 PM · Jan 7, 2021
"Day length (sidereal) & axial tilt for the 8 largest planets in our solar system"
https://i.imgur.com/AcIv58m.gifv #Astronomy #Space
Venus? Wtf? (Discussion imjur )
 

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Very small Apollo-class Asteroid
2015 NU13
It will pass by Earth on Jan. 9, 2021.
Another asteroid will fly by Earth today.

Posted by Teo Blašković on January 8, 2021

 
Just a short update on the graph above and all the associate data: It looks like we have already (as of now) broken the above record from last year by quite a margin in 2020, and we still have two months to go for this year! And that's despite the Covid-Nonsense probably having significantly decreased the observership capabilities this year with observatories being shut down and such. I'll update all the data next year. Stay tuned!

Can't wait.

It's been a crazy year both on planet and off.

The new data is available now. I have decided to leave the old database from last year exactly as it was (everyone can still go in there too and have a look) and create a complete new one for this year instead (went through everything again, corrected small errors, double-checked, added new data etc). One reason for that is to have a record of possible changes over the years that have been made in the official databases. That might be useful at some point to see which objects/trends have been added/deleted/changed and why. It might even give us a clue (if we assume there might be some hiding going on because they know of dangerous objects or trends that the public shouldn't know about) if there is some trickery of the numbers/objects/trends involved. So far it doesn't look like it to me though. It could also give us other clues.

Anyway, in the following posts the new database and data will be presented.
 
First off: The users guide from last year also applies to the new database:

Short Users Guide:

The Database is divided into four overreaching sections (folders), named as follows: "A =", "B =", "C =" and "D =". Within each folder all graphs and lists are numbered as follows: "1 = ...", "2 ...=", "3 ...=" etc. Every folder, graph and list in the database is chronologically ordered from the letters "A" to "D" and the numbers "1 = ...", "2 ...="etc. So for example when we refer to "A9", it means: "Folder A" and Graph or List number "9". Chronologically means that folder "A" for example contains everything in the further reaches of our Solar System and "D" is on the other hand of this chronological spectrum, namely; objects that directly hit our planet either as fireballs or impacts. The numbering of Graphs and Lists ("1 = ...", "2 ...="etc.) follows roughly the same logic.

A = Solar System (Moons outer Planets)

B = Near Earth Environment: All Near Earth Objects [NEOs = Near Earth Asteroids (NEAs), Near Earth Comets (NECs), Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs)]

C = Close Calls nearer than Moon: NEOs approaching Earth less than 1.01 LD (Lunar Distances) = Past, Present, Future

D = Earth Impact: Fireballs

Note 1: To make use of some lists, it looks like you need an existing Google account that is connected to the browser you are using. Let me know if something isn't working. If needed, I could also find a way that we don't have to use Google to access and use the database.

Note 2: List "11" in Folder "C" contains 5 additional Graphs, numbered as follows: "11.1 = ..." to ""11.5 = ..."

Added on 13.06.2020 = 1 more list 1 more graph: Text above corrected accordingly

The New Database can be found and accessed here:

2020: All Data and Graphs (Moons, NEOs, NEAs, NECs, PHAs, Fireballs etc)

As with the previous database, everyone can go into the new database, take look and download stuff etc. Also, same as last year: don't be afraid to destroy anything in the database! Feel free to arrange the tables and every data/graph/picture in there to your liking. Nothing can go kaput! I've complete backups of everything that can't be accessed/changed by the public.

The next posts will contain a thorough presentation of the latest data/graphs/lists from the database, without much annotations. We will let the numbers speak instead. If you look closely at the data in the database and compare it with the other data points, I think there is a lot that can be gleaned out of in terms of questions/research etc.
 
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