FIRE IN THE SKY: NASA Discovers Near-Earth Asteroid 2013 MZ5 - One Of 10% Of Potentially Life-Threatening Deep Impact Space Rocks; At Least 100,000 ARE STILL OUT THERE!

June 26, 2013 - SPACE - The good news: NASA has discovered the 10,000th near-Earth object (NEO). The bad news: At least 100,000 are still out there.

NEOs are asteroids and comets that approach Earth, coming within 28 million miles (45 million kilometers) of our planet during their orbit around the sun. The vast majority of these chunks of space rock and ice are harmless — they just fly right by, minding their own business, in well-defined, well-known orbits.

NEOs also come in a range of sizes, from the pipsqueak few-footers to the rather terrifying whopper, 1036 Ganymed, that measures 25 miles (41 kilometers) across.

And now NASA has discovered the 10,000th NEO — a 1,000 feet (300 meters) wide asteroid affectionately named 2013 MZ5.

“Finding 10,000 near-Earth objects is a significant milestone,” said Lindley Johnson, program executive for NASA’s Near-Earth Object Observations (NEOO) Program at NASA Headquarters. “But there are at least 10 times that many more to be found before we can be assured we will have found any and all that could impact and do significant harm to the citizens of Earth.”

That means there’s at least 100,000 of these (potentially) marauding space rocks still to be tracked down, a feat that NASA is tackling head-on.

The latest asteroid was spotted by the Maui-based Pan-STARRS-1 telescope as part of a NASA-funded, University of Hawaii-managed PanSTARRS survey. 2013 MZ5 is by no means a hazardous asteroid and is not expected to be any threat to Earth of the foreseeable future.

The discovery of 2013 MZ5 is the latest in a long line of NEO discoveries, most of which have been made by NASA projects over the last 15 years.

“The first near-Earth object was discovered in 1898,” said Don Yeomans, manager of NASA’s Near-Earth Object Program Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif. “Over the next hundred years, only about 500 had been found. But then, with the advent of NASA’s NEO Observations program in 1998, we’ve been racking them up ever since. And with new, more capable systems coming on line, we are learning even more about where the NEOs are currently in our solar system, and where they will be in the future.”

Although many more space rocks remain to be found, it’s believed that the majority of big, potentially hazardous NEOs have been discovered. Of the 10,000 discoveries so far, roughly 1,000 are larger than one-kilometer across. From this size and up, should one hit Earth, it would have global consequences for the planet and all life on it. So far, none of these large objects pose a threat. Even better news is that only a few dozen of the largest NEOs remain to be found.

As the NEOs get smaller, they’re harder to detect, meaning the vast majority of undiscovered NEOs are small, but not insignificant, objects. For example, any space rock measuring 30 meters (100 feet) or bigger can cause significant damage to a populated region should it hit. Less than one percent of NEOs 30 meters and smaller have been spotted so far.

Asteroid 2013 MZ5 as seen by the University of Hawaii's PanSTARR-1 telescope. (NASA).

In 2005, NASA was directed by Congress to find 90 percent of all NEOs 140 meters (460 feet) or larger. It is believed there are around 15,000 NEOs of that size, 30 percent of which have been discovered so far.

So NEO programs are finding new objects at an average rate of 3 per day, greatly enhancing our ability of tracking and identifying potentially hazardous NEOs. But as can be seen from the numbers, it’s not necessarily the largest, civilization-ending NEOs that may cause concern, it’s the smaller, city-killing NEOs that may take us by surprise.

As the asteroid that exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia, in February showed us, it doesn’t take a huge piece of space rock to cause widespread damage and injury to a populated region. The Chelyabinsk meteor was only 15 meters (50 feet) wide. - FOX News.

Comet ISON - Hubble Telescope Catches An Early Glimpse Of "Comet Of The Century" As Computer Simulations Predict Comet Could Blast Earth With Odd Meteor Shower!

April 24, 2013 - SPACE - Comet ISON, the long-traveling iceball that skywatchers hope will turn into the "Comet of the Century," takes on a fuzzy glow in an image captured two weeks ago by the Hubble Space Telescope and unveiled on Tuesday. The picture was taken on April 10, using Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3, when the comet was 386 million miles (621 million kilometers) from the sun and 394 million miles (634 million kilometers) from Earth. That's just inside the orbit of Jupiter. Right now, the comet's brightness is roughly magnitude-16, which means it can only be seen with telescopes. But comet-watchers are hoping that ISON will get dramatically brighter as it swings around the sun in late November. Some have said the comet could match the brightness of Venus or even the full moon.

Hubble Telescope Catches An Early Glimpse Of "Comet Of The Century".

Comet C/2012 S1 (ISON) takes on a fuzzy glow in an April 10 image from the Hubble Space Telescope. The blue tint has been added to the black-and-white imagery. The comet was slightly closer than Jupiter's orbit at a distance of 386 million miles from the sun (394 million miles from Earth).
J.-Y. Li (PSI) / NASA / ESA

The reason for those hopes — and the reason for all the "coulds" and "mights" — is that ISON appears to be a long-period comet, coming in from the far reaches of the solar system for the first time in living memory. Such comets are unpredictable: Will they shed lots of dust and glowing gas, or will they turn out to be duds? ISON's orbit is due to bring it within 700,000 miles (1.2 million kilometers) of the sun's surface. That could cause ISON to crumble like Comet Elenin did in 2011, or it could spark a flare-up of Comet Lovejoy proportions. Unlike Comet Lovejoy, which lit up the Southern Hemisphere's skies during 2011's holiday season, Comet ISON should be visible from the Northern Hemisphere — which means Americans might get an eyeful during this year's winter holidays. (There's that pesky "might"!)

The picture from Hubble helps astronomers get a better fix on the current state of Comet ISON: The nucleus appears to be no larger than three or four miles (five to seven kilometers) across. In Tuesday's image release, the Hubble team says that's "remarkably small, considering the high level of activity observed in the comet so far." The comet's fuzzy head, known as the coma, measures about 3,100 miles (5,000 kilometers) across, or a little less than the distance from New York to Dublin. ISON's tail extends more than 57,000 miles, far beyond Hubble's field of view. Detailed readings from Hubble could unlock the secrets of ISON's origins, University of Maryland astronomer Michael A'Hearn said in a news release. "We want to look for the ratio of the three dominant ices, water, frozen carbon monoxide, and frozen carbon dioxide, or dry ice," A'Hearn said. "That can tell us the temperature at which the comet formed, and with that temperature, we can then say where in the solar system it formed." Comet ISON was discovered last September and is formally known as C/2012 S1 (ISON). It takes its name from the International Scientific Optical Network, a group of observatories in 10 countries managed by Russia's Keldysh Institute of Applied Mathematics. - Cosmic Log.

Comet Could Blast Earth With Odd Meteor Shower.

A small but incredibly bright comet heading toward the sun could do more than dazzle Earth’s skies when it arrives later this year. Scientists say Comet ISON, already shedding dust at the prodigious rate of about 112,000 pounds per minute, could spark an unusual meteor shower.  Computer simulations predicting the location and movement of the comet’s dust trail show Earth will be passing through the fine-grained stream around Jan. 12, 2014.  Some of the particles, which are smaller in diameter than a red blood cell, should be pushed back by the pressure of sunlight, allowing them to be captured by Earth’s gravity when the planet plows through the largely invisible stream.

This contrast-enhanced image was produced from Hubble's view of Comet ISON to reveal the subtle structure in the inner coma of the comet. Such enhancements help astronomers determine the comet's shape and evolution, plus the spin of its solid nucleus.
J.-Y. Li (PSI) / NASA / ESA

“As the comet passes Earth’s orbit going into the sun, you’ll have particles trailing behind it. But since it’s passing so close to the sun, you’re also going to have particles pushed away by the pressure of the sunlight. That means we’ll have particles coming outward and also falling inward. We don’t often deal with particles that come both directions,” said Bill Cooke, lead scientist at NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.  The particles are so small that even though they will hit the atmosphere at about 125,000 mph, instead of burning up, triggering so-called “shooting stars,” they will be stopped entirely, predicts astronomer Paul Wiegert, with the University of Western Ontario in Canada.  The only visible and detectable sign of the comet dust might be a proliferation of bright blue clouds at the edge of space. Scientists suspect these so-called noctilucent, or “night-shining” clouds are be seeded by dust in the upper atmosphere.

Eventually, the trapped comet dust will make its way -- silently and invisibly -- to the planet’s surface.  Comet ISON, which was discovered in September 2012 by amateur astronomers in Russia, is believed to be making its first swing into the inner solar system, so unlike repeat fliers, it hasn’t laid down a rich dust trail from previous orbits for Earth to fly through.  ISON is an acronym for the telescope the astronomers were using, the International Scientific Optical Network. If the comet survives -- and that’s a big if -- the comet will about 700,000 miles above the surface of the sun when it makes its closest approach on Nov. 28. The closest it will come to Earth will be about 40 million miles on Dec. 26.  A comet in the 1970s passed 10 times farther away from the sun than ISON's orbit and partially disintegrated, noted Cooke.  “ISON may very well not survive. I guess we won’t know for sure until we look for it to come out from behind the sun,” Cooke told Discovery News.  Currently the comet is about 280 million miles away from Earth and approaching the outer part of the asteroid belt. - NBC News.

NASA's ScienceCast - Comet ISON Meteor Shower.

Anticipation is building as Comet ISON plunges into the inner solar system for a close encounter with the sun in November 2013. Blasted at point-blank range by solar radiation, the sungrazer will likely become one of the finest comets in many years.  When NASA's Swift spacecraft observed the comet in January 2013, it was still near the orbit of Jupiter, but already very active. More than 112,000 pounds of dust were spewing from the comet's nucleus every minute.  It turns out, some of that dust might end up on Earth. Veteran meteor researcher Paul Wiegert of the University of Western Ontario has been using a computer to model the trajectory of dust ejected by Comet ISON, and his findings suggest that an unusual meteor shower could be in the offing.  "For several days around January 12, 2014, Earth will pass through a stream of fine-grained debris from Comet ISON," says Wiegert. "The resulting shower could have some interesting properties. 

WATCH: NASA's ScienceCast - Comet ISON Meteor Shower.

 According to Wiegert's computer models, the debris stream is populated with extremely tiny grains of dust, no more than a few microns wide, pushed toward Earth by the gentle radiation pressure of the sun. They will be hitting at a speed of 56 km/s or 125,000 mph. Because the particles are so small, Earth’s upper atmosphere will rapidly slow them to a stop.  "Instead of burning up in a flash of light, they will drift gently down to the Earth below," he says.  Don’t expect to notice. The invisible rain of comet dust, if it occurs, would be very slow. It can take months or even years for fine dust to settle out of the high atmosphere.  While the dust is “up there,” it could produce noctilucent clouds (NLCs). 

WATCH: Paul Wiegert's model of the Comet ISON debris stream.

 NLCs are icy clouds that glow electric-blue as they float more than 80 km above Earth's poles. Recent data from NASA's AIM spacecraft suggests that NLCs are seeded by space dust. Tiny meteoroids act as nucleating points where water molecules gather; the resulting ice crystals assemble into clouds at the edge of space itself.  This is still speculative, but Comet ISON could provide the seeds for a noctilucent display. Electric-blue ripples over Earth's polar regions might be the only visible sign that a shower is underway.  Wiegert notes another curiosity: "The shower is going to hit our planet from two directions at once."  When Earth passes through the debris stream, we will encounter two populations of comet dust. One swarm of dust will be following the Comet ISON into the sun. Another swarm will be moving in the opposite direction, pushed away from the sun by solar radiation pressure. The streams will pepper opposite sides of Earth simultaneously.  "In my experience, this kind of double whammy is unprecedented," says Wiegert.  Bill Cooke, lead scientist at NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office, says there's little danger to Earth-orbiting spacecraft. "These particles are just too small to penetrate the walls of our satellites, and they don't stand a chance against the heavy shielding of the ISS." However, he adds, mission operators will be alert around January 12th for possible anomalies.  Sky watchers should probably be alert, too. The odds of seeing anything are low, but Comet ISON could prove full of surprises. - NASA.

Orginal @ http://thecelestialconvergence.blogspot.hk/2013/04/fire-in-sky-comet-ison-hubble-telescope.html

‘Bluish’ Fireball Lights Up San Francisco Skies

On the day after the Russian meteor took the internet and the world by storm, a fireball was spotted lighting up the skies in San Francisco, California as well. Whether or not the San Francisco fireball was part of the meteor that struck the Ural's in Russia is not known at this time. From NBC Bay Area in San Francisco, California:

On a day that had a lot of people talking about meteorites and asteroids, a fireball of some sort was seen streaking across the Bay Area skies.

It was bluish in color and appeared to be heading straight to the ground, according to one viewer in Santa Clara. 

Meteors are pieces of rock and metal from space that fall to Earth. They burn up as they go through our atmosphere. The burning is what causes the bright flash of light.

Candice Guruwaiya told us on Facebook she saw it in San Jose. "I was leaving Safeway on Branham and Snell when I saw it. It looked like it was headed for the Capital Auto Mall area. It was a bright green when it first appeared, then it went to a bright yellow. It was awesome!" Guruwaiya posted.

View more videos at: http://nbcbayarea.com

Cuban Fireball Bigger Than The Sun

The meteorite that fell on Cuba on Friday, the day after the meteorite that crashed into the Urals in Russia, was bigger than our sun, according to many witnesses. Whether or not the meteor in Cuba was related to the meteorite that struck Russia is unknown at this time.

An object fell from the sky over central Cuba on Thursday night and turned into a fireball “bigger than the sun” before it exploded, a Cuban TV channel reported Friday, citing eyewitnesses.

The object then turned into a fireball “bigger than the sun,” said the witnesses, adding that several minutes later they heard a loud explosion.

It remains unknown whether the reported phenomenon in Cuba is related to Friday’s meteor strike in central Russia, which set off a shockwave that shattered windows and left some 1,000 people injured.

Deadly radiation and toxins brought by the Cosmic Dust...

In the sermons of 2012 Glorious Hope message, Pastor Wind shared with us that the meteorites, comets or cosmic dust from the outer space may carry deadly radiation.

If these meteorites from the outer space carry radiation or toxins, such as arsenic trioxide and cyanide, when they hit the Earth and landing on the ground or the water, people may get sick or die from radiation, arsenic trioxide or cyanide.

On September 15, 2007, there was a meteorite landed on Peru, South America. A large number of people and livestocks contracted serious illnesses, which might be due to the radiation or arsenic trioxide brought by the meteorite:

Peru meteorite landing confirmed, illnesses questioned

Last Updated: Thursday, September 20, 2007 | 10:02 AM ET 

The Associated Press

A fiery meteorite crashed into southern Peru over the weekend, experts confirmed on Wednesday, but they remain puzzled over claims it gave off fumes that made 200 people ill.

Local residents told reporters that a fiery ball fell from the sky and smashed into the desolate Andean plain near the Bolivian border Saturday morning.

A crater in Carangas, in the Puno region of Peru, was caused by a meteorite that crashed over the weekend, causing hundreds of people to suffer headaches, nausea and respiratory problems, a health official said Tuesday. 

(Miguel Carrasco/La Razon/Associated Press)

Jose Mechare, a scientist with Peru's Geological, Mining and Metallurgical Institute, said a geologist had confirmed that it was a "rocky meteorite," based on the fragments analyzed.

He said water in the meteorite's muddy crater boiled for maybe 10 minutes from the heat and could have given off a vapour that made people ill, and scientists were taking water samples.

"We are not completely certain that there was no contamination," Mechare said.

Jorge Lopez, director of the Health Department in the state where the meteorite crashed, told the Associated Press on Tuesday that 200 people suffered headaches, nausea and respiratory problems caused by "toxic" fumes emanating from the crater, which is some 20 metres wide and five metres deep.

But a team of doctors who reached the isolated site said Wednesday they found no evidence the meteorite had sickened people.

Doctors told an Associated Press Television News cameraman at the site that they had found no sign of radioactive contamination among families living nearby. But they said they had taken samples of blood, urine and hair to analyze.

Peasants living near the crater said they had smelled a sulphureous odour for at least an hour after the meteorite struck and that it had provoked upset stomachs and headaches.

But Jose Isisuka, a geologist for the institute who was studying the crater, said he doubted the reports of a sulphureous smell.

Modesto Montoya, a member of the medical team, was quoted by Lima daily El Comercio as saying fear may have provoked psychosomatic ailments.

"When a meteorite falls, it produces horrid sounds when it makes contact with the atmosphere," he told the paper. "It is as if a giant rock is being sanded. Those sounds could have frightened them."

Justina Limache, 74, told El Comercio that when she heard the thunderous roar from the sky, she abandoned her flock of alpacas and ran to her small home with her eight-year-old granddaughter. She said that after the meteorite struck, small rocks rained down on the roof of her house for several minutes and she feared the house was going to collapse.

Meteor expert Ursula Marvin said that if people were sickened, "it wouldn't be the meteorite itself, but the dust it raises."

A meteorite "wouldn't get much gas out of the earth," said Marvin, who has studied the objects since 1961 at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Massachusetts. "It's a very superficial thing."

Three geologists from Peru's Geophysics Institute are expected to report on the incident on Thursday.

Hernando Tavera, a geophysicist at the institute, said similar cases were reported in 2002 and 2004 elsewhere in southern Peru, but were never confirmed as meteorites.