Massive 2012 DA14 asteroid
The massive 2012 DA14 asteroid came closest to the Earth late on
Friday and is how heading away from the planet, Russian astronomers said
on Friday.
The asteroid, the size of a 15-storey building, reached its closes point to the Earth at 23:25 on Friday, approaching the planet at the distance of 27,700 km, closer than communication and weather satellites.
“Currently, from the point of view of an observer in the center of European Russia, it can be found on the southeastern part of the sky, in the Virgo constellation, about eight degrees above the horizon,” said Leonid Yelenin, an astronomer of the Keldysh Institute of Applied Mathematics.
The flyby took place about 16 hours after a meteorite shower left some 1,200 people injured in the Urals city of Chelyabinsk.
The asteroid wasn’t visible to the naked eye, shining at its brightest with an apparent magnitude of about 7.0. A person with average eyesight can see celestial objects with brightness down to magnitude 6.
The 2012 DA14, which is roughly 50 meters (165 feet) in size and weighting about 130,000 metric tons, was first spotted by a team of Spanish astronomers at the La Sagra Sky Survey. Their calculations had demonstrated that the celestial body would fly close to the Earth in 2013, with a small possibility of impact.Russia meteor unobservable beforehand
A senior official at NASA says the US space agency could not
detect what's believed to be a meteor that exploded over central Russia.
Jim Green, director of NASA's Planetary Science Division, spoke to NHK
on Friday. Green leads a team of scientists observing meteors near
Earth.
Green said what fell in Russia is believed to be a medium-sized meteor.
He explained there's a limit to existing observation technology, saying only about 15 percent of the meteors which could hit Earth can be observed at the moment.
Green said meteors measuring 3 to 7 meters in diameter fall to Earth almost every day. He said most of them burn up in the atmosphere or fall in uninhabited areas.
The NASA official stressed the need for enhanced international observation efforts.
NASA says the diameter of the Russian meteor was about 17 meters, revising initial estimates of about 15 meters.
Media agencies
The asteroid, the size of a 15-storey building, reached its closes point to the Earth at 23:25 on Friday, approaching the planet at the distance of 27,700 km, closer than communication and weather satellites.
“Currently, from the point of view of an observer in the center of European Russia, it can be found on the southeastern part of the sky, in the Virgo constellation, about eight degrees above the horizon,” said Leonid Yelenin, an astronomer of the Keldysh Institute of Applied Mathematics.
The flyby took place about 16 hours after a meteorite shower left some 1,200 people injured in the Urals city of Chelyabinsk.
The asteroid wasn’t visible to the naked eye, shining at its brightest with an apparent magnitude of about 7.0. A person with average eyesight can see celestial objects with brightness down to magnitude 6.
The 2012 DA14, which is roughly 50 meters (165 feet) in size and weighting about 130,000 metric tons, was first spotted by a team of Spanish astronomers at the La Sagra Sky Survey. Their calculations had demonstrated that the celestial body would fly close to the Earth in 2013, with a small possibility of impact.Russia meteor unobservable beforehand
Green said what fell in Russia is believed to be a medium-sized meteor.
He explained there's a limit to existing observation technology, saying only about 15 percent of the meteors which could hit Earth can be observed at the moment.
Green said meteors measuring 3 to 7 meters in diameter fall to Earth almost every day. He said most of them burn up in the atmosphere or fall in uninhabited areas.
The NASA official stressed the need for enhanced international observation efforts.
NASA says the diameter of the Russian meteor was about 17 meters, revising initial estimates of about 15 meters.
Media agencies
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