Fire in the SkyS


Meteor

New Comet: P/2012 F5 (GIBBS)

Giovanni Sostero, Ernesto Guido and Nick Howes
Remanzacco Observatory
Mon, 26 Mar 2012 12:38 UTC
CBET 3069 and M.P.E.C. 2012-F87, issued on 2012, March 25, announced the discovery of a periodic comet by A. R. Gibbs on Mar. 22.8, through the Mount Lemmon 1.5-m reflector. On his images, Gibbs, found a stellar coma and a long, narrow tail about 7'.4 long in p.a. 292.5 deg. The new object has been designated P/2012 F5 (GIBBS) by the Minor Planet Center.

We tried its follow up at first on 2012, March 23.8, when this object was still listed in the NEO-CP webpage as "TF85899". We operated from the Malina River Observatory (Povoletto, Italy) through a 0.3-m, f/4.7 reflector + CCD, under a hazy sky. On our stackings we found a faint and narrow, streak, about 2-arcmin long, oriented toward PA 295 deg.

This feature was very close to the expected position of "TF85899" however, due to its faintness (R about 19.2) and curious shape, we suspected it might be a noise, rather than a real object, so we decided to go for a second night of follow-up, just to make sure. On 2012, Mar. 25.8, we repeated the observations of this object with the same set-up, and found again an odd aspect: kind of elongated and narrow tail, at least 30" long, toward PA300 (in these images we suspected that the tail might be longer than this, however our observations were hampered by a bright, nearby field star). The central condensation was very difficult to locate, hampering its precise astrometric measurement.
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Meteor

2 Small Asteroids Give Earth a Close Shave

Tariq Malik
Space.com
Mon, 26 Mar 2012 12:09 UTC
Asteroids
© Ted Stryk/Emily LakdawallaThis montage of images from several different observations and missions shows asteroids and comets visited by spacecraft from Earth.

Two tiny asteroids zipped close by Earth today (March 26), passing between our planet and the orbit of the moon, but posed no threat of impacting our world, NASA scientists say.

The two space rocks flew by Earth in rapid fire; one zoomed by early in the day while the second buzzed the planet at 1:09 p.m. EDT (1709 GMT), according to astronomers with NASA's Asteroid Watch program.

"Both are very small (under 10 meters) and pose no risk," the scientists wrote in a Twitter update.

The first object, called asteroid 2012 FP35, came within 96,000 miles (154,000 km) of the Earth when it passed by earlier today, the scientists wrote. Asteroid 2012 FP35 is just under 30 feet (9 meters) wide, making it about the size of a tour bus.

The second asteroid is dubbed 2012 FS35 and crept even closer to Earth, coming within 36,000 miles (58,000 km) when it whipped by the planet. Asteroid 2012 FS35 is even smaller than its predecessor; at nearly 10 feet (3 meters) wide, it's only the size of a small car.
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Meteor

"Space Junk" Forces Station Astronauts to Take Shelter in Lifeboats

Tariq Malik
SPACE.com
Sat, 24 Mar 2012 07:56 UTC
Image
© NASASunlight glints off the International Space Station with the blue limb of Earth providing a dramatic backdrop in this photo taken by an astronaut on the shuttle Endeavour just before it docked after midnight on Feb. 10, 2010 during the STS-130 mission.
A leftover piece of an old Russian satellite forced six astronauts on the International Space Station to take shelter in a pair of lifeboat-like space capsules today (March 24), but zipped harmlessly by the outpost to the crew's relief.

The piece of space junk was spotted too late to move the orbiting laboratory out of the way and flew as close as 6.8 miles (11 kilometers) when it zoomed by at about 2:38 a.m. EDT (0638 GMT), NASA officials said.

While the chances of collision were remote, the potential danger of a hit was enough for Mission Control to order the station crew - which includes three Russians, two Americans and a Dutch astronaut - to seek shelter in two docked Soyuz space capsules just in case a quick escape to Earth is required.

"I don't see anything, which is good news," one of the station astronauts said in Russian, which was translated in a NASA broadcast.

It was the third time in 12 years that station astronauts took shelter from a close space debris pass.

Comment: SOTT wonders what is UP with all the recent alleged man-made space objects either falling out of the sky, or forcing astronauts to take shelter in lifeboats? Is it possible that it is not really "space junk" and such explanations are being offered to cover up the fact that the planet is being subjected to cometary fragment bombardment?

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Meteor

"Space Junk" Misses ISS


RIA Novosti
Sat, 24 Mar 2012 06:50 UTC
Image
© NASAInternational Space Station
A piece of space debris missed the International Space Station (ISS) on Saturday, forcing its crew members to take shelter in rescue craft, NASA said.

The debris "safely passed in front of the ISS," the U.S. space agency wrote on its Twitter account.

The six crew members were given the all clear to return to their normal duties.

NASA said the junk was a leftover from a February 2009 collision involving Russia's defunct military communications satellite Comsos 2251 and the U.S. commercial Iridium spacecraft.
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Attention

Mars And The New Supernova


Space Weather
Wed, 21 Mar 2012 12:01 UTC
"On March 18th, I photographed the planet Mars among the galaxies of Leo," reports amateur astronomer Oscar Martín Mesonero of Salamanca, Spain. "The next morning, I learned that a supernova exploded in the galaxy M95. I quickly checked the photos and there it was!"

New Supernova and Mars
© Oscar Martin MesoneroImage Taken: Mar. 18, 2012
Location: Salamanca, Spain
"Unwittingly, using my ED80, I had photographed a supernova of magnitude +13.5 only two days after its discovery," says Mesonero. "I never expected the night to bring so many wonderful things."

The rapidly brightening supernova is an easy target for mid-sized backyard telescopes equipped with CCD cameras--and it's easy to find only a degree south of Mars. Astrophotographers, now is your chance to catch a supernova in the act.
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Sun

Solar Eruptions Linked to Giant Loops of Super-Hot Plasma

Charles Q. Choi
SPACE.com
Tue, 20 Mar 2012 13:19 UTC
Image
© Steele Hill/SDO/Goddard Flight Center/NASAA single, gigantic prominence blossomed out from the Sun on the first day that SDO began taking images. It reached out over 25 times the size of Earth. Prominences are unstable clouds of cooler gas tethered above the Sun's surface by magnetic forces.
Giant unstable loops of plasma arcing from the surface of the sun may be the root of explosive solar flares and other solar eruptions, researchers find. Astronomers have long noticed enormous arches of plasma emerging from the sun's surface. Known as magnetic flux ropes, these structures possess spiraling magnetic field lines, as if a huge bar magnet had been twisted into a corkscrew. A massive amount of electrical current typically runs through the core of each such tube.

Magnetic flux ropes (also known as coronal loops and solar prominences) sit on the surface of the sun, with matter and energy flowing through them, for hours or days. Scientists have long thought these structures are linked with solar explosions eruptions such as coronal mass ejections that can wreak havoc on satellites in space and power grids on Earth, but direct evidence of this remained elusive.

A year ago, however, researchers witnessed the formation and evolution of a magnetic flux rope on the surface of the sun before and during a solar eruption.
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Sun

Strange sounding Solar Storm Soundtrack Recorded in New Sun Video


SPACE.com
Tue, 20 Mar 2012 11:44 UTC
A new video captures the frenzied sounds of a sun storm, based on data recorded by two spacecraft as they were bombarded with charged particles during a recent solar eruption. The video is a visual and auditory glimpse of the sun in early March, when it erupted in the strongest solar storm in eight years. The storm unleashed a wave of solar plasma and energetic particles, which NASA's Messenger spacecraft at Mercury and the sun-watching Solar and Heliospheric Observatory recorded during the cosmic barrage.

Robert Alexander, a design science doctoral student at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, created the video using a technique that "sonifies" the measurements from the two spacecraft. Alexander is a composer with a NASA fellowship to study how representing information as sound could help scientists with analysis and data mining.

Image
© Robert Alexander/University of MichiganThe velocity and inertia of high-speed charged particles ejected from the sun during a coronal mass ejection (CME) can be measured as they slam into spacecraft; the resulting data can be presented as sound.
Video can be heard here.
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Meteor

New Comet C/2012 F1 (Gibbs)

Seiichi Yoshida
Aerith.net
Sun, 18 Mar 2012 12:08 UTC
Discovery Date: March 16, 2012

Magnitude: 18.7 mag

Discoverer: A. R. Gibbs (Catalina)

Magnitude Chart
© Aerith.netMagnitude chart.
The orbital elements are published on M.P.E.C. 2012-F30.
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Meteor

The Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis Revisited


CraterHunter
Fri, 16 Mar 2012 13:38 UTC
Since I've been talking about Cluster Airburst events since I started this little amateur blog back in 2009, and in light of recent developments in the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis, I think it's time for this humble amateur take this opportunity to gloat little, and write an update.
asteroid
© Corbis

Last year when I first wrote A Different Kind of Climate catastrophe I pointed out that one of the major flaws in the YD impact hypothesis as written was that the original authors weren't working from a valid astronomical model. In fact, they were all over the place with their speculation as to just what the nature of the catastrophe 12,900 years ago may have been, or what had hit us. That's what got them into trouble and gave opponents to the hypothesis the rallying cry of "Where's the crater?" But to be fair, they were citing the work of Toon et al in their estimate that it would take a four mile wide bolide to account for a continent wide debris layer. And at the time, Toon et al's work on impact scaling was respected as the state of the science in the impact research community.

I think it's going to wind up being seen as ironic that the physicist who came out as the chief skeptic of the hypothesis, Mark Boslough, and who correctly pointed out that it is physically impossible for a four mile wide bolide to have enough time in the atmosphere to break up completely and scatter fragments, and debris, over a continent sized area without making a good sized crater somewhere just happens to be the same scientist who first considered that very large airburst phenomena might be capable of significant melting, and efficient ablation the surface of the Earth without making a crater.

Since 2007 the YD Impact hypothesis has come under fire from numerous skeptics. And it finds a current update, and a new iteration in the work of Isabel Israde-Alcántara et al and the new PNAS paper Evidence from central Mexico supporting the Younger Dryas extraterrestrial impact hypothesis.
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Meteor

Near-miss asteroid to return even closer next year


Phenomenica
Fri, 16 Mar 2012 10:56 UTC
Image
© NASA
An amateur team spotted the unusual asteroid, named 2012 DA14, on February 22.

Its small size and orbit meant that it was observed only after it had flown past Earth at about seven times the distance of the Moon.

However, current predictions indicate that on its next flyby, due on 15 February 2013, it will pass Earth at just 24 000 km - closer than many commercial satellites.

"This is a safe distance, but it is still close enough to make the asteroid visible in normal binoculars," said Detlef Koschny, responsible for near-earth objects in ESA's Space Situational Awareness (SSA) office.

The asteroid was discovered by the La Sagra Sky Survey observatory, in the southeast of Spain, near Granada, at an altitude of 1700 m, one of the darkest, least light-polluted locations on the European mainland.

"Considering its path in the morning sky, its rather fast angular motion, the quite faint and fading brightness and its orbit high above the plane of Earth's orbit, it was a slippery target - and easily could have escaped undetected during this Earth visit," said Jaime Nomen, one of the discoverers.
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