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Virtual Telescope
A newly found asteroid, 2013 EC, can be seen in the lower left corner of the red box in this image.
By Nancy Atkinson
Universe Today
A newly found asteroid will pass by Earth at about the distance of the moon's orbit, with its closest approach coming at 2:35 a.m. ET (7:35 a.m. UTC) Monday.
Named 2013 EC, the asteroid is roughly the size of the space rock that exploded over Russia two and a half weeks ago, measuring somewhere between 10 and 17 meters (33 to 55 feet) wide. The asteroid that sparked the Russian meteor is estimated to have been about 17 meters wide when it entered Earth’s atmosphere.
2013 EC was discovered by the Mount Lemmon Observatory in Arizona on Saturday. There is no chance this asteroid will hit Earth.
The asteroid is due to come within 246,000 miles (396,000 kilometers) from Earth. In comparison, the moon's distance from Earth varies between 225,622 and 252,088 miles (363,104 to 406,696 kilometers).
Gianluca Masi from the Virtual Telescope Project had a live view of the asteroid when it was about twice the distance of the moon, and a replay of that webcast is available below. (The event starts at about the 38-minute mark in the YouTube video.)
"That we are finding all these asteroids recently does not mean that we are being visited by more asteroids," Masi said during the webcast, “just that our ability to detect them has gotten so much better. Our technology has improved a lot over the past decades."
Gianluca Masi from the Virtual Telescope Project discusses the asteroid 2013 EC during a Google+ Hangout. The commentary begins at about the 38-minute mark in this raw video.
More about asteroids:
- Russian meteor lurked for millennia, experts say
- Asteroid 2012 DA14 tracked on radar
- NBCNews.com archive on asteroids
More info about 2013 EC on the JPL Small Body Database.
This report was originally published on Universe Today as "Newly Found Asteroid to Pass Within Moon’s Orbit on March 4, 2013." Copyright 2013 Universe Today. Reprinted with permission.
Leave a Comment:
Readers,
If you want to learn more about the Mount Lemmon Survey (MLS), that discovered 2013 EC, then please visit www.lpl.arizona.edu/css/index.html . It is quite interesting.
Great work and research by UA! Nice site very clean.... just saying
I've been a fan of Adam Block's work at Mt. Lemmon Observatory for years, check out the galleries while you're there.
Hopefully this one won't have any siblings that are closer.
That's what makes them easy to detect. Watching them blow up is a key element in the new tracking system.
Like a steell ball inside a pin ball machine bouncing off the bumpers sooner or later it's gonna happen.
You never see the one that gets you.
Actually, with asteroids, you might, but I'm not convinced we have the technology to prevent it.
You got asteroids? No, but my Dad does.
So, it wont hit Earth, but it could come close to our Moon.
What Alan said below.
If your friend lives two blocks north of where you live, and you walk 2 blocks south, you are the same distance from your house as your friend, but you are not at your friend's house.
I haven't checked this out, but I suspect that even though it's close to a lunar distance from Earth, it's not necessarily super-close to the current position of the moon in its orbit.
"Our ability to detect them has gotten so much better"? So until recently that big thing exploding in the Russian sky would have gone unnoticed?
Yeah, something like that. Breaking windows might have been a clue.
In the past our government would deny them, even when they were reported. They would do their best to paint you as crazy, if you reported seeing anything! Swamp gas, weather balloons, sea gulls, you name it. I don't trust it to tell the truth these days either. If you trust the government, you might try opening your eyes and ears, for a change? It turns out that they can fool most of the people, all of the time.
@ IWonder-932455 good call. So you see it to. I figured out to get the truth from what the government says,you take what they tell you turn it around backwards and you have it.
I knew that someone would get on a soap box and start crying about either the government or politicians. I read the story and I saw nothing about the government in it. The people reporting these asteroids are scientist...not government politicians. Way to go guys for going off topic.
OMG, the sky is falling.
It's scary to realize that Earth itself, our moon and every other planet has been repeatedly bombarded with asteroids, comets, and other flying objects over millions of years, that there are so very many of them out there that we still have no idea of, and that even our most advanced nuclear weapon technology is almost helpless to prevent most of those that could hit us. I wish I didn't know these facts. Ignorance is truly bliss.
Son; The sky is falling daddy!
Dad; No son thats just an asteroid.
Son; But,,,
Enjoy the show, it gets better...
These things fall on us every day all the time. Dont panic.
on the one hand, im glad that people are taking an interest to asteroids, meteors, and other things that involve space. but on the other hand, it shows how little people pay attention to space in the first place, which is quite sad, because suddenly people now panic anytime they hear of an asteroid coming close to earth. i mean earth (and the moon, and every other planet and celestial body) has been hit with meteors and asteroids since it was formed. jupiter has been hit with a couple of comets in the past 10 or so years. collisions like the one that happened in russia happen all the time here on earth, but because we are so spread out on this planet, we hardly ever notice them.
Discovered <48 hours before passing? We stand no chance when the real deal shows up.
Why? because we can monitor such a small portion of the sky, and redirecting a massive celestial object in <48 hours is not a mission we are prepared for.
How can we improve? we need a dedicated network of satellites monitoring every angle. How do we finance this? The world needs to put Army $ into Space. We don't need to defend ourselves from each other, we need to defend ourselves from the unknown.
Aaron Schnacky for global leader. Peace
Discovered <48 hours before passing? We stand no chance when the real deal shows up.
Why? because we can monitor such a small portion of the sky, and redirecting a massive celestial object in <48 hours is not a mission we are prepared for.
How can we improve? we need a dedicated network of satellites monitoring every angle. How do we finance this? The world needs to put Army $ into Space. We don't need to defend ourselves from each other, we need to defend ourselves from the unknown.
Aaron Schnacky for global leader. Peace
I think I liked it better when I didn't know what was coming at us.
Does anyone else feel like we were a little bit better off when we didn't know?
You mean, until we can DO something about them ... yeah, I'd tend to agree with that sentiment
I wonder if this is what the Mayans were calibrating their calendar to ... regular visits (albeit several thousand years apart) from a cluster of asteroids.
Considering the current theories about how the earth was made, and how we got our water, etc. It kind'a fits ...
The Mayans had very little chance of detecting objects of this size.
Glad they waited to tell us until after it had already gone by. Otherwise every news agency in the world would have drug out the old doomsday scenario again to try and drum up readership. Just don't tell us if there's another one inbound. We don't need to know.
A much much bigger one is headed perilously close to Mars on October 19th, 2014
http://science.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/02/26/17107085-comet-just-might-hit-mars-in-2014?lite
And according to JPL labs the minimum has gone down from 67,000 miles to 33,000 miles when the arc data was doubled.
http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=2013A1;cad=1;orb=1;cov=0;log=0#orb
But it's too soon to get a precise finger on this if it will impact Mars but if it does Earth should be very worried as the fallout could put Earth in the crosshairs.
Better save up those frequent flyer miles!
If the Comet C2013 A1 hits Mars it will be visible from the southern hemispere in and around Australia.
I can imagine all the news and thousands of tourists flocking there because it will be visible to the naked eye in broad daylight if it hits. It will appear for a while as a tiny '2nd sun'. Briefly anyway.
That's the power of 178,000 Teratons of TNT (the expected energy release;1800 more than the dino killer of 65 million years ago).
Several other labs have now chimed in with their own data and a composite result has the probability cone squarely within an impact of Mars. So the probability is more than Zero.
It will be the event of the EON if it hits.
This could really bolster NASA's budget for asteroid detection!!