Keep watch on the northern sky tonight. Several recent solar blasts are working their way toward Earth as you read this. Expect the bee-like swarm of subatomic particles to buzz past the planet and possibly link into out magnetic domain by late afternoon. Minor (G1) storming is expected during the early evening hours over the U.S.…
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Spooky may be a rough character, but scary? Naw. The usual lumps and bumps, but given its small size, maybe more spherical than expected. On Halloween morning, the near-Earth asteroid 2015 TB145 (nicknamed ‘Spooky’) flew only 300,000 miles (486,000 km) from Earth and became bright enough to see in a modest-sized telescope. It was also the…
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Before we embark on today’s topic, let’s update where we’re at with Nova Delphini 2013. For the past day it’s plateaued around magnitude 5.0, maybe even rising a tad to 4.9. It remains easily visible in binoculars high in the southeastern sky at nightfall. Light from the nearly full moon now drenches the sky, making…
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An asteroid it would take an hour to walk across will speed past Earth on May 31 and provide radio astronomers a perfect opportunity to nab closeup views of its surface. 1998 QE2, discovered in 1998 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Lincoln Near Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) program, will miss our planet by a healthy…
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Ever wonder how scientists get such detailed radar images of asteroids that only look like points of light in optical telescopes? Tune in tonight or tomorrow night to a talk by Dr. Lance Benner, research scientist at the Jet Propulsion Lab, to find out. Benner will speak on Radar Imaging of Near Earth Asteroids at…
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