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Palomar

Member

From: USA

Registered: 2002-05-30

Posts: 9,734

Re: Asteroid 2004 PT42 - ...Flyby this week

*25 million kilometers away -- no threat to us.  Is approximately 1 mile wide (why do science sites mix metric and standard measurements??  It's bad enough we have to deal with that in grocery stores and the medical field...geez)

From spaceweather.com:

"...and (it's) just bright enough to photograph through backyard telescopes. Here's a short video captured on August 17th by Mike Holloway of Van Buren, Arkansas:

http://science.nasa.gov/spaceweather/sw … gif](think of "Ride of the Valkyries" opera music when you view this)  :laugh:

...Holloway caught the 14th-magnitude asteroid using a 4-inch refractor and a CCD camera. Each frame is a 60-second exposure."

Amazing something a mere mile in diameter hurtling 25 million km away could be visualized by a 4-inch anything, optically speaking.  Cool, though.  Tumble on, "little" asteroid. 

--Cindy

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We all know [i]those[/i] Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...

--John Sladek (The New Apocrypha)