Asteroid 2008 CT3

UPDATE: It is confirmed asteroid 2008 TC3 hit the Earth's atmosphere around 750 miles southwest from the projected atmospheric impact area, this was confirmed by an Air France KLM airliner, the crew noticed a short flash just before the impact time. Apparently a few meteorites made it to the surface. The image below shows the infrared satellite image of the airliner (+) and the predicted impact area (0). As of right now there are no known images of the Fireball.




A small asteroid, 2008 TC3 was to have entered the Earth's atmosphere over Northern Sudan creating quite the light show last night, no pics so far, probably not a whole lot of camcorders over there. The above YouTube video is a simulation of what the Earth would look like from the approaching asteroid. As far as the asteroid, nothing too major about that, we get this size entering our atmosphere every other month or so, but what is interesting about this event is that this was the first time someone was able to predict when and where an asteroid was going to enter our atmosphere ahead of time, it's been tried before but with no success. I'm hoping there is more of the same to come, I'd love nothing better then to stand in my backyard with my camera awaiting the next arrival of a new born baby fireball.


Now the size of this asteroid ranged any where from a few meters to several feet and is not expected to do any damage if it happens to reach the surface, it's not the size I'm concerned with, I mean it's hard to give an exact size of something that far away, but can we pick a system people, I laid awake last night thinking, ... what was the size of it again? , 3 ft., 3 meters, no it was 10 meters, no 10 feet, geez. The first thing you notice when you get into amateur astronomy is we embrace both systems, I don't have just a 12 inch scope, I also have a 300 mm one, coupled with the fact that I also have a 8 inch 200 mm scope, too many numbers, too many numbers. I've resolved to the fact that my scopes no matter what size make stuff bigger. I'm also finding the older I get the less numbers I can remember so it would be great if we just let the old system go and delve into the metric system, it would make things a whole lot easier. The asteroid what ever size it ended up being was first discovered by the NASA funded Catilina Sky Survey with their telescope on Mt. Lemmon, image above. I will update this post as soon as more info becomes available. Hey while we're all waiting for some images of asteroid 2008 CT3, I thought I'd post the image below, it is a daytime fireball I was lucky enough to capture while taking an image of a Sunset last April, since it was only a few degrees from the Sunset I was imaging I had my camera equipped with a telephoto lens and focused, got it exploding.





On October 6 2008 around 4:40am EDT Messenger came within 125 miles of Mercury for the second time this year. The probe took 100's of images , gathered data and grabbed another gravity assist to slow it down for it's eventual orbital insertion with the planet in March of 2011.

Messenger started sending back images this morning around 1:50 am, the image above shows Mercury about 90 minutes after the probes closest approach. A lot of the eastern portion of the above image are views not taken by any spacecraft before. I will update this post as I receive more information.



I leave you now with an animated Moon collage I put together with the various Moon shots I have taken with my camera/various sizes of scopes.

Asteroid 2008 CT1

We add another near miss asteroid to our growing collection. First there was asteroid 2007 WD5 close flyby of Mars, then we have asteroid 2007 TU24 coming within 334,000 miles of Earth now we have a newly discovered asteroid 2008 CT1 missing us by only 84,000 miles on February 5, came from behind the glare of the Sun, didn't see it coming. Now the size is only somewhere between 8-20 metres, still it could have taken out a large city if it actually got through the atmosphere and hit us. The asteroid was discovered by the LINEAR or Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research Project.


Finally Shuttle Atlantis after a 2 month delay got off the ground to deliver and install the Columbus laboratory on the International Space Station. Video shows that a couple of what they think to be small foam pieces fall of the external fuel tank 2 minutes after launch, and then another piece of foam came off about 7 minutes into the launch. The astronauts spent most of Friday inspecting the Shuttle's heat shield using it's 15m boom and robotic arms. Pilimanary findings look good, no apparent damage.

On a final note, a musical note at that, NASA for the first time ever is using it's Deep Space Network to beam a song, a Beatles song Across The Universe into space, towards the North star Polaris, about 431 light years away. Had to get Yoko Ono's okay, just in case aliens have MP3 capability and do illegal downloads. The real funny part in all this is that some scientists are saying there needs to be more open discussions about the potential risks involved in sending even symbolic messages to potentially evil aliens, that's why I linked the lyrics to the song, maybe a rap song that says "come get a piece of me" over and over again, aliens could consider it a challenge and try to get a piece of us. Maybe they mean the part of the Beatles song were it says "nothing's gonna change my world" as an out and out challenge to the bad aliens, and they might see it as such and come and try to change our world, who knows for sure what aliens think. The song was sent to celebrate the 40th. anniversary when the Beatles recorded the song and the 50th. anniversary of the Beatles and NASA beginnings.

I'll leave you now with another prairie sunset animated gif.

Asteroids and Spy Satellites

People it's becoming one big shooting gallery up there, first we have the near miss of Mars with asteroid 20007 WD5 today, then we have the close approach of asteroid 2007 TU24 yesterday, the above image, then we have the Spy Satellite free falling out of the sky.

Okay, this intrigues me, being a Spy from way back when, I thought I better look into this one. To really understand what's going on here you have to think like a spy. We have stuff falling out of the sky regularly so why did we happen to hear about this one? Maybe the NSC wants the Russians and Chinese to know about this satellite so it would force their hand and use their antigravitational technologies, but the Russians and Chinese thinking like spys thinking that's what the Americans are trying to do and won't use their technology, but maybe the Americans don't really want the Russians and Chinese to get this satellite and think by saying how important it is, they think the Russians and Chinese will think they are just trying to force their hand and use the antigravitational technologies, and therefore they won't, so they win and the Russians and Chinese won't use their technologies to capture the satellite.

I know what your thinking, Bob's lost his mind for sure, but maybe I'm crazy like a fox, after all I am a spy from way back when, I know how these people think, maybe I have been working for the NSA all along and have been passing code, eg. 20007 all along in my posts.

Okay enough spy talk, I was washing dishes 6am Sunday morning when I was looking out my back window and thought wait a minute, it got bright all of a sudden, did the Moon sneak through the cloud cover I thought to myself, grabbed my camera which I always keep beside me now , ran out the back door and saw a cool Moon through what looked like a portal in space grabbed a couple of pics and got the shot. I'm gonna leave you now with a little video I took of the wolf Moon, notice the cool wispy clouds and the Moon's movement caused by the Earth's rotation, notice also the atmosphere turbulence causing it to look like it's going in and out of focus.