Surprise visitors
September 23rd 2010 02:31
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Image courtesy of American Meteor Society
Two small asteroids made an approach to earth on September 8, 2010.
At that point the asteroids was already just a little over 1.5 million miles (2.4 million kilometers) from Earth, and approaching fast.
Two asteroids 2010 RX30 and 2010 RF12 passed inside the orbit of the Moon on Wednesday, September 8, 2010.
The objects are approximately 30-foot (10-meter) asteroid, dubbed 2010 RF12, passed within about 50,000 miles (80,000 kilometers) of Earth.
About 12 hours earlier, asteroid called 2010 RX30, a 50-foot (15-meter) passed within 154,000 miles (248,000 kilometers) of our planet about halfway between Earth and the Moon.
These objects were a considerable distance from earth well away from any satellites and posed no danger to earth.
There are many encounters like this occurring every few months the reason we don’t see them until they are practically at our door step is because these objects are too small to be detected by radar or telescopes.
Although these are the ones that are discovered mostly by keen astronomers, many more pass this close undetected.
Occasionally we can see a fireball light up the sky even in daylight these are generally meteorites objects the size of a basketball.
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Comment by S.L.
The Political Brief
Comment by CarlCan
Astroearth
Camera Sense
Fortunately we don’t get hit with large meteorites very often as most land in the ocean.
But we tend to see plenty of fireballs in the sky from objects either passing through our upper atmosphere briefly then continuing on, some burn up in the process.
There is no real estimate of how many there are out there but as I mentioned in the blog there are a lot of objects that we just don’t see and are missed.