Record Setting Asteroid Flyby
by Mitch Battros - Earth Changes Media
On Feb. 15th an asteroid about half the size of a football field will fly past Earth only 17,200 miles above our planet's surface. The space rock, designated 2012 DA14, has NASA's attention. "This is a record-setting close approach," says Don Yeomans of NASA's Near Earth Object Program at JPL. "Since regular sky surveys began in the 1990s, we've never seen an object this big get so close to Earth."
Asteroid "2012 DA14" measures some 50 meters wide - the impact of a 50-meter asteroid created a mile wide crater known as "Meteor Crater" in Arizona when it struck about 50,000 years ago. Also, in 1908, something about the size of 2012 DA14 exploded in the atmosphere above Siberia, leveling hundreds of square miles of forest. Researchers are still studying the "Tunguska Event" for clues to the impacting object.
NASA radars will be monitoring the space rock as it approaches Earth closer than many man-made satellites. The asteroid will thread the gap between low-Earth orbit, where the ISS and many Earth observation satellites are located, and the higher belt of geosynchronous satellites, which provide weather data and telecommunications.
NASA's Goldstone radar in the Mojave Desert is scheduled to ping 2012 DA14 almost every day from Feb. 6th through 20th. The echoes will not only pinpoint the orbit of the asteroid, allowing researchers to better predict future encounters, but also reveal physical characteristics such as size, spin, and reflectivity. A key outcome of the observing campaign will be a 3D radar map showing the space rock from all sides. _________________________ Giant Magnetized Outflows from our Galactic Center Scientists from Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) reported the discovery of giant, twin extensions of gamma-ray emission protruding above and below the plane of our Milky Way galaxy, and centered on the super-massive black hole at our galaxy's core. It now appears these giant bubbles of hot gas can be seen at radio wavelengths as well.
Scientists argue the bubbles were produced either by an eruption from the black hole sometime in the past, or else by a burst of star formation in that vicinity. (CfA) astronomer Gianni Bernardi and eight of his colleagues describe finding the emission of charged particles are polarized - a general property of electromagnetic radiation. In the case of radio wavelengths, the explanation for polarization is the presence of strong magnetic fields.
The team of scientists calculated the radio extensions closely matching gamma-ray expansion in overall dimensions but which contain three ridge-like substructures - are probably polarized by the presence of strong magnetic fields that extend out of the galactic plane in both directions. The amounts of energy contain roughly the equivalent to the total current output of the Sun for a time equal to the lifetime of the universe.
Mitch Battros
Producer - Earth Changes Media
Email: newsletter@earthchangesmedia.com