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
September 27, 2011 there were 1250
potentially hazardous asteroids.
Notes: LD means
"Lunar Distance." 1 LD = 384,401 km, the distance
between Earth and the Moon. 1 LD also equals 0.00256
AU. MAG is the visual magnitude of the asteroid on
the date of closest approach.
NASA says it will hold a news conference at 1 p.m. EDT (6 p.m. GMT) on Thursday to reveal near-Earth asteroid findings and implications for future research. The briefing will take place at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission, launched in December 2009, captured millions of images of galaxies and objects in space. During the news conference, panelists will discuss results from an enhancement of WISE called Near-Earth Object WISE (NEOWISE) that hunted for asteroids.
The news conference panelists will include Lindley Johnson, Near-Earth Object program executive, NASA Headquarters, Washington; Amy Mainzer, NEOWISE principal investigator, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California; Tim Spahr, director, Minor Planet Center, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, Cambridge, Massachusetts; and Lucy McFadden, scientist, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland.
The conference takes place on the same week that a 13-metre-wide asteroid, named SE58, passed within 0.6 Lunar Distances of Planet Earth. SE58′s approach occured in the early hours of Tuesday 27 September 2011.
The NASA conference also coincides with an ESA (European Space Agency) seminar on Space Situational Awareness, which also be held on Thursday in Warsaw, Poland. Participants will include senior managers, policy-makers and scientists from ESA, ESA Member States, the EU, European institutions and international partner organisations.
The Agency’s SSA Preparatory Programme was authorised at the November 2008 ESA Ministerial Council and formally launched on 1 January 2009. The objective of the SSA programme is to support Europe’s independent use of, and access to, space through the provision of timely and accurate information, data and services regarding the space environment, and particularly regarding hazards to infrastructure in orbit and on the ground. In general, these hazards stem from possible collisions between objects in orbit, harmful space weather and potential strikes by natural objects that cross Earth’s orbit.
It remains unclear at this point whether NASA or the ESA will reveal further information about a near-earth asteroid that is scheduled to pass between the moon and earth later this year.
The 1300-foot-wide (400 metres) asteroid, which is more than one and a half times the length of a soccer pitch, will pass within 0.85 lunar distances of the Earth on November 8, 2011.
Discovered on December 28, 2005 by Robert McMillan of the Spacewatch Program near Tucson, Arizona, 2005 YU55 is believed to be a very dark, nearly spherical object.
According to NASA’s Near Earth Object Program: “Although classified as a potentially hazardous object, 2005 YU55 poses no threat of an Earth collision over at least the next 100 years. However, this will be the closest approach to date by an object this large that we know about in advance and an event of this type will not happen again until 2028 when asteroid (153814) 2001 WN5 will pass to within 0.6 lunar distances.”
Trajectory of Asteroid 2005 YU55 - November 8-9, 2011. Credit NASA
While neither the European Space Agency (ESA) nor NASA has suggested that YU55 poses a threat to Earth, plans to develop a mission to counteract a potential asteroid collision in the future are already underway.
The ESA confirmed last month that it is planning to fire an ‘impactor’ satellite into a ‘test’ asteroid in 2015 to see if the object’s trajectory can be altered. The Agency is conducting the test mission in light of the minimal threat posed by the 700-1100-foot-wide 99942 Apophis asteroid, which has a one in 250,000 chance of impacting Earth in 2036.
Other Recent Asteroid Encounters
In late June 2011, earth experienced one of its closest encounters with an asteroid in recent years. But as NASA indicated in the days ahead of the ‘cosmic close call’, the encounter was so close that Earth’s gravity sharply altered the asteroid’s trajectory and prevented the space rock from impacting the planet.
2011MD, a newly discovered asteroid passed within 12,000 kilometres (7,500 miles) of Earth. The asteroid was only sighted for the first time on 22 June by a robotic telescope in New Mexico, USA. The International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center in Massachusetts, USA, put out an alert Thursday.
It was daylight in the UK and Ireland (12.30 GMT) when the asteroid passed over the southern Atlantic Ocean, near the coast of Antarctica. The event was observable from South Africa and parts of Antarctica. It also was visible in the hours leading up to the closest approach across Australia, New Zealand, southern and eastern Asia, and the western Pacific.
Some media outlets proclaimed the asteroid to be as big as New York’s Empire State Building’. In fact, 2011 MD measured about 16 feet to 35 feet.
According to Minor Planet Center’s ranking charts 2011 MD’s trip was the fifth-closest recorded Asteroid event. The last asteroid to impact earth was ‘2008 TC3’ which was detected on 7 October 2008, just 19 hours before it burned up in the atmosphere over northern Sudan.
On 2 June, a 10-metre wide asteroid passed between the earth and moon.
Asteroid 2009 BD, which was first observed on 16 January 2009 passed approximately within 0.9 lunar distances (the distance between Earth and the Moon) of earth. Astronomers believe the rock is a rare “co-orbital asteroid” which follows the orbit of the Earth, not receding more than 0.1 AU (15 million km) away.
Two asteroids, several meters in diameter and in unrelated orbits, passed within the moon’s distance of Earth on September 8 2010. In April 2010 an asteroid roughly as long as a tennis court zoomed past Earth at about the distance of the moon. The space rock to pass at or within lunar distance previous to this was 2009 JL2, an asteroid about 17 to 37 metres across, in May 2009.
There is a roughly 50 percent chance of a 30-metre-wide plus asteroid striking Earth each century, according to Clark Chapman, a space scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, USA.
The Curious Case of Comet Elenin: A Weird Skywatching Tale
by Geoff Gaherty, Starry Night Education
Amateur astronomer Michael Mattiazzo of Castlemaine, Australia caught these two images of comet Elenin on Aug. 19 (left) and Sept. 6, 2011. The images show a rapid dimming in the comet, possibly hinting at its disintegration.
Russian amateur astronomer Leonid Elenin had the good fortune to discover a comet on Dec. 10, 2010, and it's turned out to be quite a skywatching curiosity.
Initially, comet Elenin received quite a bit of attention from astronomers because its orbit would take it quite close to Earth, within 22 million miles (35 million kilometers), on Oct. 16, 2011. It looked like it was going to put on a good show.
Even as recently as Aug. 19, the comet was brighter than predicted, as observed and photographed by amateur astronomers in Australia, notably Michael Mattiazzo. [See Mattiazzo's comet Elenin photos and video]
Then, disaster struck in the form of a coronal mass ejection from the sun. The next day the comet had dropped half a magnitude in brightness, and has continued to drop, despite the icy body getting closer to the sun. Apparently the comet is disintegrating, as sometimes happens when comets pass too close to the sun.
Meanwhile, this rather small and ordinary comet has become the subject of media frenzy among conspiracy theorists and 2012 doomsayers. Comet Elenin has been accused of being a brown dwarf or the mysterious and destructive planet "Nibiru," and has been blamed for earthquakes and tsunamis. Did you know that its discoverer’s name is really an acronym for "Extinction Level Event: Nibiru Is Nigh?"
The next day, Mattiazzo managed a couple of images in the evening twilight sky as the comet dropped too close to the sun to be followed any further. The comet was a faint ghost of its former self.
Since then, the comet has been lost to view because of its faintness and its proximity to the sun in the sky.
If all had gone as planned, the comet would be moving into the field of view of one of the cameras on NASA's Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) satellite on Friday (Sept. 23). If so, the big question is: what will SOHO see about this comet?
Most people look at the images from SOHO for the rich information they supply regarding the sun. However, the wide-field images also show the sun against the starry background on the far side of the solar system.
Careful comparison of the images in SOHO to the images in planetarium software allow you to identify the background stars, and watch the planets pass behind and in front of the sun.
Comet Elenin will be moving into SOHO’s field of view on Friday September 23. Or will it CREDIT: Starry Night Software
This sky map of comet Elenin's path shows the situation on Friday, as the remains of the comet enter SOHO's field of view from the left. The bright stars Zaniah and Zavijava of western Virgo should be easy to see, but brilliant Mercury will dominate the images on the right.
Elenin will pass Zaniah on Sunday (Sept. 25) and Mercury on Tuesday (Sept. 27), before moving out of SOHO's field of view on Thursday (Sept. 29).
At this point, no one can predict exactly what we will see through SOHO's eyes in the coming week, but everyone will have the chance to watch using one of NASA's brightest eyes on the solar system.
If comet Elenin survives its close encounter with the sun, it will become visible in morning twilight towards the end of the first week of October.
Editor's note: If you snap an amazing photo of comet Elenin or any other skywatching target and would like to share the experience with SPACE.com for a possible story or photo gallery, please contact managing editor Tariq Malik at: tmalik@space.com.
Friend requests, status updates and endless tweets – it’s enough to tempt some to disappear from cyberspace without a trace.
The vanishing act is as easy as taking a deep breath and handing over an account number and password.
“Everyone should have the right to disconnect. Seamless connectivity and rich social experience offered by web 2.0 companies are the very antithesis of human freedom,” declare the developers of a killer service aimed at helping users erase their profile from the web.
Victims of cyber bullying, senders of ill-advised online rants about an employer or the fed up can be candidates for withdrawing from Facebook or Twitter.
“Click here to sign out forever,” entices the Web 2.0 Suicide Machine site (suicidemachine.org).
When given a user’s account name and password, a noose of automated scripts erases account information on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and LinkedIn.
In Facebook, which failed to shut down Suicide Machine early last year, the account doesn’t disappear, but gets moved to the Social Network Suiciders group, which currently has 652 members.
Facebook now boasts more than 800 million active users who produce and comment on more than 2 billion posts per day.
Suicide Machine is the brainchild of Moddr, a Dutch artists’ collective. Seppukoo, a similar site successfully shut down by Facebook in 2009, was spawned by an Italian duo.
Seppukoo co-creator Clementi Pestelli treats it as virtual guerilla art.
“We wanted to subvert virtual life and interconnected life,” Pestelli explains. “It’s an example of a strike in the post-industrial society.”
The artist says his team used the same viral marketing techniques that businesses use to attract a following on the Web.
“When a user deactivated the account, an invitation was sent to their friends’ accounts. In one month, we reached 1 million Facebook users, and 20,000 accounts were deactivated,” he boasts.
But, just as there can be consequences for blowing your Twitter stack at your boss, a social-media disappearing act could backfire on users.
“As peer pressure increases and the expectation for the presence of a well-established virtual self grows, those who opt out of these societal norms will face a host of consequences including isolation, distrust and perhaps even sanction,” writes Marc Goodman, an international specialist on Internet security issues.
He believes it’s likely participation in some form of virtual community will soon be expected, “for the common welfare of a society.”
Goodman warns: “Though the idea of a Web 2.0 Suicide Machine may be humorous today, as the virtual self becomes more relevant and central to our lives in the future, eventually society will condemn the idea of virtual suicide and may even rule it to be illegal.”
In a South Carolina prison sixty-six years ago, guards walked a 14-year-old boy, bible tucked under his arm, to the electric chair. At 5' 1" and 95 pounds, the straps didn’t fit, and an electrode was too big for his leg.
The switch was pulled and the adult sized death mask fell from George Stinney’s face. Tears streamed from his eyes. Witnesses recoiled in horror as they watched the youngest person executed in the United States in the past century die.
Now, a community activist is fighting to clear Stinney’s name, saying the young boy couldn’t have killed two girls. George Frierson, a school board member and textile inspector, believes Stinney’s confession was coerced, and that his execution was just another injustice blacks suffered in Southern courtrooms in the first half of the 1900s.
In a couple of cases like Stinney’s, petitions are being made before parole boards and courts are being asked to overturn decisions made when society’s thumb was weighing the scales of justice against blacks. These requests are buoyed for the first time in generations by money, college degrees and sometimes clout.
“I hope we see more cases like this because it help brings a sense of closure. It’s symbolic,” said Howard University law professor Frank Wu. “It’s not just important for the individuals and their families. It’s important for the entire community. Not just for African Americans, but for whites and for our democracy as a whole. What these cases show is that it is possible to achieve justice.”
Some have already achieved justice. Earlier this year, syndicated radio host Tom Joyner successfully won a posthumous pardon for two great uncles who were executed in South Carolina.
A few years ago Lena Baker, a black Georgia maid sent to the electric chair for killing a white man, received a pardon after her family pointed out she likely killed the man because he was holding her against her will.
In the Stinney case, supporters want the state to admit that officials executed the wrong person in June 1944.
Stinney was accused of killing two white girls, 11 year old Betty June Binnicker and 8 year old Mary Emma Thames, by beating them with a railroad spike then dragging their bodies to a ditch near Acolu, about five miles from Manning in central South Carolina. The girls were found a day after they disappeared following a massive manhunt. Stinney was arrested a few hours later, white men in suits taking him away. Because of the risk of a lynching, Stinney was kept at a jail 50 miles away in Columbia.
Stinney’s father, who had helped look for the girls, was fired immediately and ordered to leave his home and the sawmill where he worked. His family was told to leave town prior to the trial to avoid further retribution. An atmosphere of lynch mob hysteria hung over the courthouse. Without family visits, the 14 year old had to endure the trial and death alone.
Frierson hasn’t been able to get the case out of his head since, carrying around a thick binder of old newspaper stories and documents, including an account from an execution witness.
The sheriff at the time said Stinney admitted to the killings, but there is only his word — no written record of the confession has been found. A lawyer helping Frierson with the case figures threats of mob violence and not being able to see his parents rattled the seventh- grader.
Attorney Steve McKenzie said he has even heard one account that says detectives offered the boy ice cream once they were done.
“You’ve got to know he was going to say whatever they wanted him to say,” McKenzie said.
The court appointed Stinney an attorney — a tax commissioner preparing for a Statehouse run. In all, the trial — from jury selection to a sentence of death — lasted one day. Records indicate 1,000 people crammed the courthouse. Blacks weren’t allowed inside.
The defense called no witnesses and never filed an appeal. No one challenged the sheriff’s recollection of the confession.
“As an attorney, it just kind of haunted me, just the way the judicial system worked to this boy’s disadvantage or disfavor. It did not protect him,” said McKenzie, who is preparing court papers to ask a judge to reopen the case.
Stinney’s official court record contains less than two dozen pages, several of them arrest warrants. There is no transcript of the trial.
The lack of records, while not unusual, makes it harder for people trying to get these old convictions overturned, Wu said.
But these old cases also can have a common thread.
“Some of these cases are so egregious, so extreme that when you look at it, the prosecution really has no case either,” Wu said. “It’s apparent from what you can see that someone was railroaded.”
And sometimes, police under pressure by frightened citizens jumped to conclusions rather than conducting a thorough investigation, Wu said.
Bluffton Today - 'Crusaders look to right Jim Crow justice wrongs' by Jeffrey Collins Photo: South Carolina Department of Archives and History
A bizarre heckler labelled President Obama 'the antichrist' before he was dragged out of a California fundraiser by Secret Service agents.
The man had positioned himself at the front of the stage at the House of Blues in Los Angeles last night and began shouting loudly as soon as Mr Obama started talking.
Identified by the Secret Service as David Serrano, the heckler began shouting 'Jesus Christ is God and a Christian God' as the audience booed him.
Bizarre rant: David Serrano, with his arm pointing at the stage, interrupted Barack Obama's fundraiser speech in the House of Blues, Los Angeles
Led out: Serrano shouted Biblical messages and then said Mr Obama was the Antichrist before he was ejected by Secret Service agents
The President stopped talking, but the man was drowned out by the 800-strong crowd as they chanted 'Four more years! Four more years!.
As he was taken out by agents he then yelled: 'Jesus Christ is God! Barack Obama is the Antichrist!'
Serrano was questioned, but later released without charge.
Mr Obama then continued with his speech, but was later interrupted by another heckler, who shouted: 'Don't forget medical marijuana!'
He responded: 'Thank you for that.'
Tony Bell, a spokesman for Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael Antonovich, said Mr Serrano had been a regular at county meetings and often gave long, rambling religious statements.
He told the New York Times: 'He yells out his statements, which are very mistaken, odd interpretations of scriptures.
'He's been pretty close to being thrown out of our meetings. I don't have the impression he's dangerous, but he has issues that could use some help.'
Shrugging it off: The President laughed after his speech was interrupted in front of an audience of 800 supporters
Campaign drive: Mr Obama has just completed a 2-day fundraising tour along the West Coast and is expected to have raised millions for his reelection campaign
The Los Angeles visit ended a string of successful fundraisers along the West Coast for the President.
Despite tough economic times, supporters shelled out for events from Seattle to San Diego that are likely to have raised more than $5million in two days.
Mr Obama's approval rating dropped over the summer as concern mounted the U.S. was headed into a second recession.
For the first time, he singled out one of the front-runners to win the Republican Party nomination when he called out Texas Governor Rick Perry by name during a speech in Silicon Valley.
A song and dance: U.S. rappers Playboy Tre, left, and B.O.B. perform at the fundraiser in Los Angeles
His sharpened tone reflects a deliberate effort to take on Republicans and push back against criticism from his own base that he has been too conciliatory and not fought his opponents hard enough.
But he has shown he can still generate cash, with a second-quarter total of $86million raised on behalf of both his own campaign and that of the Democratic Party.
With next year's election likely to be a close and expensive race, the support of wealthy donors who can donate a large cheque and round up their rich friends is vital.
But Mr Obama's historic run to the White House in 2008 was also supported by hundreds of thousands of small donors.
His campaign team said he was on track to have drawn one million donors by next month - hitting that goal in half the time it took in 2008.
A heckler shouting about Jesus Christ interrupted President Barack Obama at a fundraiser before security dragged him out. As he was taken out the man called out that Obama is an antichrist. (Sept. 26)
