Asteroid to whiz by Earth and Moon December 11, discovered yesterday

Idk but i always think that they are bidding on the child who is standing on the Masonic checker board.

[link to youtu.be]

[youtube]<iframe width="560" height="315" src=" [link to www.youtube.com] frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

So where are the best places to view this going to be, North or Souther Hemis etc?

I'll see what I can do. Logging onto a telescope in Spain right now to start acquiring images.

Northern hemisphere. It's visible in Europe right now. Should mention, it will get better for southern hemisphere as it gets closer to closest approach. Right now the declination is +26. Doable from many places in the southern hemi but optimized for northerners.

Last Edited by Astromut on 12/10/2012 06:13 PM

Does anyone ever predict the possible impact of a rogue asteroid colliding with an inbound comet, changing it's trajectory? Just curious! I mean with everyone speculating, thought I would toss that out there.....look down the road a bit.

Thanks Astro, can you give me any indication as to where I should be looking from Christchurch, NZ??

clear sky here in Venice (Italy), although I would freeze to death staying outside the whole night......

Can not spot anything as of now.... honestly, I have no clue what direction I should look at anyhow..... anyone mind help enlighten me ?? ty

So where should I be looking? North? And what will it look like? just to make sure I get the real thing and not just some random star :P

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What about the Long Island/NY metro area? Where should one look?? (maybe on top of our heads heading down)..

This page has some info on where to look. Ballpark is Orion

[link to earthsky.org]


IMAGE ( [link to en.es-static.us] )


Last Edited by Helkuit on 12/10/2012 06:36 PM

If you will notice there is an asteroid coming in from the left of the screen and it's about to hit the earth. There are only two types of people on the earth. One is going up to Heaven and one is still on the earth, very much absorbed in his cell phone/Ipad or whatever.
This is taking place at the time of a message from the past in the period of the pyramids/Mayans. There is an alignment of planets at the top (looks like an eclipse) at this time and the elite/government are prepared and in their bunkers underground discussing the arrival of the 'Son' which could be the Son of God who is partially covered with a rectangular red block which represents the past (which also covers half of the pyramids).

I think this picture, which is currently on the Bank of America in N.C. and painted by the Illuminati pretty much says exactly where we are in history.

The question I have is this: there are two people who are left on the earth at the time this happens....one is going up to Heaven and one is left on the earth because his priorities are here on the earth...

Just my two cents which is probably worthless but thought I'd share....

Well fair warning, this thing is magnitude 13 at best, so it requires a large telescope or deep space imaging with a decent telescope to be able to see it. Here's my first image of it; since the weather's bad here I dialed into a telescope in Spain to remotely image the asteroid. It's the bright white line in the top left window.
[link to i319.photobucket.com]

Thanks for sharing this with us!

"Daft............."

How quaintly English, there...........

Will you also say "bloody" and "poppycock" as well?

LOL.

LOL.

Indeed.

+1 for you, poster.

So how close will it come near us, then, Dr. Astro?

Here's a couple of stacked images I took of the asteroid. I dailed into T-18 on the itelescope network in Spain and took a series of 60 second exposures of the asteroid. For the first run I did 5 exposures back to back and for the second I did 3 exposures (though for the second one some thin clouds were starting to come in).
[link to i319.photobucket.com]
[link to i319.photobucket.com]
The asteroid is a series of dashed lines in each image, each dash is the asteroid moving over the course of one of the exposures that make up the image. It's hauling ass, and if you look closely you can see that the dashes are slightly longer in the second image than the first because it's getting closer to earth with every minute.

About 140,000 miles.

Thanks Astro for sharing, great pics!


I wont bother setting up my camera gear and long exposures then, will wait for the big one in the new year!

Cool, thanks