Asteroid Documentary

There is a documentary on the asteroid threat Monday night on the CBC at
10pm EST.
Looks like a gooder. Is enough being done in this area? Should more be
done?

-Toma

Toma wrote:

There is a documentary on the asteroid threat Monday night on the CBC at
10pm EST.
Looks like a gooder. Is enough being done in this area? Should more be
done?

-Toma

Nova Transcript (probably different)
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/2212doom.html

"Toma" wrote in message
news:wJYvb.130620$jy.101243@clgrps13...
There is a documentary on the asteroid threat Monday night on the CBC at
10pm EST.
Looks like a gooder. Is enough being done in this area? Should more be
done?

And what, pray tell, do you propose we should (or can) "do?"

"Toma" wrote in message news:wJYvb.130620$jy.101243@clgrps13...
Is enough being done in this area? Should more be done?

See -

Minor Planet Center, Harvard University, Near Earth Object Program
http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/NEO/TheNEOPage.html

MPC Potentially Hazardous Close Approaches List at:
http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/lists/PHACloseApp.html

NASA-JPL Near Earth Object Program
http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/index.html

A PHA ("Potentially Hazardous Asteriod") is an asteriod of 1 kilometer
in size or geater that will pass "within 0.05 AU of the earth from the
start of this year through 2178. . . . For comparison, the mean
distance of the moon is 0.0026 AU = 384400 km = 238900 miles. (1 AU is
approximately the mean distance of the earth from the sun = 149597870
km = 92955810 miles.)" MPC PHCA page above.

That an asteriod is designated a PHA does not mean that it will hit
the Earth, only that its orbit is recommended for monitoring and
better determination of its orbital parameters.

There are about 547 known PHAs, or about 60% of the suspected
population of between 1,000-1,200. The reason for the 0.05 AU criteria
is that the orbital parameters of each object are not known with
certainty. The orbits of some objects are known from 3 oppositions;
the others from only one.

For 2004, PHA's in the MPC and JPL lists that will pass closer than
11 lunar distances a

ID Date Distance-AU Lunar-dist Visual_mag
2003 WP7 2003 Dec 04 06:55 0.0183 7 24.3
2003 WY25 2003 Dec 11 23:36 0.0248 10 28.0
2001 SY269 2004 Mar. 18.32 0.02676 10
2001 US16 2004 May 8.23 0.02860 11 20.5
(25143) 2004 June 26.83 0.01290 6 18.1
1999 MN 2004 July 11.06 0.01737 8 21.1
(4179) Toutatis 2004 Sept.29.57 0.01036 5 15.3

See
http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/neo_ca?sort=date
for a more comprehensive list by date. The JPL list includes projected
visual magnitudes.

NASA recently released (Sept. 2003) a report assessing the feasibility
of studying Near Earth Objects of less than 1 kilometer in size. See
http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/neo/report.html . The population of NEOs less
than 1 kilometer is not known and may be in the hundreds of thousands.

In short, based on known PHA's, there is nothing to lose any sleep
over, much is being done and more will be done.

Regards - Kurt

PrisNo6 wrote:
: "Toma" wrote in message news:wJYvb.130620$jy.101243@clgrps13...
: Is enough being done in this area? Should more be done?

: See -

: Minor Planet Center, Harvard University, Near Earth Object Program
: http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/NEO/TheNEOPage.html

The Minor Planet Center is part of the Smithsonian Astrophysical
Observatory, not Harvard University.


--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gareth V. Williams, MS 18, 60 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.
Associate Director, IAU Minor Planet Center
http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/mpc.html
OpenVMS & RISC OS: refined choices in operating systems

"Gareth V. Williams" wrote in message ...
snip
The Minor Planet Center is part of the Smithsonian Astrophysical
Observatory, not Harvard University.

Thanks for the correction. My apologies of the misattribution. - Kurt