Asteroid 2010 ST3 Due To Pass Earth Next Month
September 29th 2010 05:13
Category: No Category
Two images of Asteriod 2010 ST3 taken 15 minutes apart on the night of 16 September show the asteroid moving against the background field of stars . image by PPS1 Scientific Consortium
Following an article in my previous blog related to asteroids crossing Earth orbital path.
2010 ST3 is estimated to be around 150 meters in diameter and is due to pass within 4 million miles of Earth.
The asteroid was found using the new visual Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System, referred to as Pan-STARRS. The PS1 telescope took the images on September 16. At the time the images were taken asteroid 2010 ST3 was 20 million miles away and closing.
What is interesting about asteroid is that some asteroids were comets and all the surface gasses evaporated all that is left is the hard debris shell. Although this object is not classed a defunct comet it could cause severe destruction should it land in a populated area. Thankfully this object will passes by.
If an object of this size were to hit Earth and explode in the atmosphere just above the surface it have the potential to trigger a blast wave enough to cause devastation on a regional scale similar to what happened to Tunguska in 1908.
Coincidently Asteroid 2010 ST3 is the first “potentially hazardous object” discovered by the new sensitive telescope named the Pan-STARRS project. This telescope in one of the front line tools used using to watch for dangerous asteroids which might pose a danger to Earth.
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Comment by S.L.
The Political Brief
Comment by CarlCan
Astroearth
Camera Sense
Just goes to show how much stuff is out there we don’t know about.
Thankfully vigilance will pay off enough to give advance warning if a small sized asteroid was to impact us.
A missile would destroy it before any thing that small could hit us. If an asteroid say the size of a house were to hit us then we would be in a world of hurt.