Strange structures on recent asteroid 2005 YU55

[ocean59]

Has anyone else seen a reference to strange structures on the surface of this asteroid? It is an awfully vague statement.

_http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15572634

An asteroid that is 400m (1,300ft) wide has passed by Earth, much to the delight of astronomers.

Although invisible to the naked eye, scientists said they spotted strange structures on its surface as it spun past at 30,000mph (48 280.32 km/h).

Asteroid 2005 YU55's was the closest an asteroid has been to Earth in 200 years, according to Nasa.

It is also the largest space rock fly-by Earth has seen since 1976; the next visit by a large asteroid will be 2028.

The aircraft-carrier-sized asteroid was darkly coloured in visible wavelengths and nearly spherical, lazily spinning about once every 20 hours as it raced through our neighbourhood of the Solar System.

Ron Dantowitz, the director of the Clay Centre Observatory in Massachusetts, followed the asteroid through a telescope.

"We're tracking the asteroid itself, so the stars are moving by in the background and the asteroid is actually streaking by at about 30,000mph," he said.

"As we track it, it looks like the stars are moving in the background and the asteroid is locked on in the centre view.

"It's not so much that we can see it tumbling like a rock in space, we're examining it for the brightness and colour."

'Closest approach'
Nasa said it had been no closer than 201,700 miles (324,600km), as measured from the centre of the Earth. The rock reached its closest point to Earth at 23:28 GMT on Tuesday.

It will now trace a path across the whole sky through to Thursday.

The asteroid often travels in the vicinity of Earth, Mars and Venus, but Nasa said this fly-by had been the closest the asteroid had come to Earth in at least 200 years.

"This is the closest approach by an asteroid that large that we've ever known about in advance," said Lance Benner of Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

But he stressed that there had been no chance that the pass would be anything other than a close encounter.

"2005 YU55 cannot hit Earth, at least over the interval that we can compute the motion reliably - which extends for several hundred years," he said.

Instead, the pass gave astronomers a rare opportunity to study the asteroid in detail.

In particular, two radio telescopes - the Goldstone Observatory in California, US and the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, US - tracked radio echoes off it in a bid to understand better what it is made of and how it is shaped.

The precise details of the asteroid's path will also help scientists to predict where it will go much further into the future.

Earth has several regular visitors like 2005 YU55 - most famously the Apophis asteroid. Apophis has in the past been claimed as a possible future impactor when it returns to our neighbourhood in 2029 and again in 2036.

There is, according to the latest calculations, no danger from Apophis either. However, it will pass much closer to Earth on 13 April 2029 - at a distance of 18,300 miles (29,500km).

 

[Cosmos]

found this : _http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLL8Nqk3Akg

PS: I don't believe for a minute that they don't have sharper pictures or videos of that asteroid. I mean they must be kidding!
it's the same thing with the moon. you always get pictures so pixelated or fuzzy so that you can't see any details!
and if you get sharp images they are either foto shoped or from areas wich show nothing anusual. some pictures are
so clearly edited it is unbelievable ! It is clear to me that they are able to make sharp photos
with tiny details visible on them from earth, moon, mars etc.

 

[clerck de bonk]

found this : _http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLL8Nqk3Akg

PS: I don't believe for a minute that they don't have sharper pictures or videos of that asteroid. I mean they must be kidding!
it's the same thing with the moon. you always get pictures so pixelated or fuzzy so that you can't see any details!
and if you get sharp images they are either foto shoped or from areas wich show nothing anusual. some pictures are
so clearly edited it is unbelievable ! It is clear to me that they are able to make sharp photos
with tiny details visible on them from earth, moon, mars etc.

Yes, they most certainly have the equipment to take detailed photographs. And then to make an irrate statement about some "strange structures" that nobody is going to verify(obviously) in any way is...(derogative statement in Finnish here)!

 

[Joe]

Well they must have better quality images, because in the available video (the six frames) there are no 'strange structures' visible!

 

[Cosmos]

Well when I think about it, why did NASA reveal this officially ?

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/asteroids/news/yu55-20111108.html

"The animation reveals a number of puzzling structures on the surface that we don't yet understand. To date, we've seen less than one half of the surface, so we expect more surprises."

I mean what is the reason for making this statement ?
they certainly know exactly what they publish and what not, so it is hard for me to think that this was a mistake or unintentionally put there.
So you could get the impression that this statement was deliberatly published to get speculations rolling especially in the alternative media.
maybe it's a deliberate disinformation program to distact people ? maybe they really saw "puzzling structures" and decided that it would fit their agenda perfectly when they publish vague statements like this ?