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Big rock incoming!


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Hi all,

There's going to be a fly-by of a big new Near-Earth Asteroid 2015 TB145 at the end of the month.

Only discovered on 10th October, here's the Wikipedia entry: "2015 TB145 is a near-Earth asteroid roughly 280–620 meters (900–2,000 feet) in diameter that will pass about 1.27 lunar distance from Earth on 31 October 2015. During closest approach to Earth the asteroid will reach about apparent magnitude 10,but the Moon will be a 80% waning gibbous. At peak brightness, the asteroid should be observable to amateur astronomers with small telescopes, but it will be best seen in the Northern hemisphere. On 31 October 2015 at 11:00 UT that asteroid will be in the constellation of Taurus about 9 degrees from the Moon."

Quite bright, so it's a good imaging and viewing opportunity, although close approach is during daytime for the UK. Should be up to 11th magnitude the night before, though.

It's only a matter of time before a biggie like this one gets us!

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The last one of these I observed was a couple of years back. Visually it was a faint star like point moving against the background stars in my 4" scope at low power. That one was closer to Earth but quite a bit smaller than TB145. It looked rather like a satellite does but it's movement was slower across the sky.

There are some star charts here to help locate it plus an initial magnitude estimate of 11.4, which is faint, but it's predicted to brighten a little during the pass. The one I saw above was about mag 7 or 8 I seem to recall:

http://www.universetoday.com/122924/how-to-see-the-spooktacular-halloween-flyby-of-asteroid-2015-tb145/

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I have just rebuilt my garden shed and you can bet you last £ that if it will hit earth there is no doubt it will be right on top of my shed :grin:

I believe the maths calculations on its projected path are rated 8.5 out of 9 for inaccuracy !!!!

We may need some new recipes that include how to cook dog :grin:

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Could be an old SIVB - apparently someone once spotted the Apollo 12 third stage and classed it as a meteor. They then realised that meteors don't generally have USA printed in large letters on the side... ;-)

In all seriousness, apparently more objects of a similar size enter the Earth's atmosphere each year than people think - they're just not always recorded.

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