Space News/UFO's Etc...(Discussion/Pics/Vids)

[ilan]

Tiangong-1 crash: China says space station came down in Pacific Ocean (The Guardian)

Officials say the space station, which had been out of control since 2016, mostly burnt up on re-entry.

The US military appeared to confirm the re-entry with a statement from its Joint Force Space Component Command (JFSCC).

 

[dara]

Whew.... close one.

 

[ilan]

Starmus Advisory Board remembers Stephen Hawking
Starmus Advisory Board

[video=youtube;Yt--6HTDcqE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=168&v=Yt--6HTDcqE[/video]​

Stephen Hawking was a man of exceptional power of spirit and a model of civic stance. He changed the way we perceive our Universe, our time and ourselves, and did it with his unique talent of communication and gentle, Hawking-style sense of humour. Although he left a rich legacy of both academic and science popularisation texts, we will miss his hilarious personality and his outstanding ability to make this world a better place, whatever he did and wherever he happened to be.

Stephen Hawking was a point of reference for scientists and science lovers and members of Starmus Advisory Board. The Stephen Hawking Medal, awarded to the most successful science communicators, will keep his legacy and continue to inspire science lovers in the name of Stephen Hawking. To many of us, Stephen Hawking was a symbol — a symbol of the immense capabilities of the human being, a symbol of never surrendering mind, and of science itself.

It strikes us as quite symbolic that he was born on Kepler’s birthday, 300 years later, passed away on Einstein’s birthday, and, like Einstein, lived to the age of 76. We will keep this symbol in our hearts and follow the path he craved for us.

Rest in peace, Professor Hawking!
STARMUS Advisory Board
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This is a short video, only 3 minutes. Essentially, it is an image collage. I wish it was a bit longer and meatier. - ilan

 

[4me2c]

This one is Decent and the last 3 minutes, except for the very end, are a Nice Touch...!

https://youtu.be/Px5nokKPCVs

 

[Ryu]

nice videos guys. thanks for sharing

 

[ilan]

Global Astronomy Month Celebrates the Moon
Mike Simmons | April 2, 2018

Astronomers Without Borders celebrates the night sky in its annual Global Astronomy Month — a month-long collection of online events and in-person gatherings. This year's theme: the Moon.

From a bad omen to a sign of love, the Earth’s Moon has been important in cultures throughout the ages. For denizens of brightly-lit modern cities it’s practically the only nighttime object anyone ever notices.

The Moon can also play a role in connecting our planet’s inhabitants. A government minister in Kurdistan, Iraq, told me how, during a visit to California in the US, he was talking to someone in Iraq when they realized they could both see the Moon – rising in California, setting in Iraq. Both saw the same object but from different angles on Earth’s sphere. Always visible from half the Earth’s surface, how many amateur astronomers, poets, lovers, and others gaze at the Moon at the same time?

The Moon may even have played a critical role in the creation of life on Earth because of its large size relative to our planet. There are larger moons in our solar system but they orbit planets that dwarf ours. In Voyager 1’s famous Pale Blue Dot image, Earth is just one bright pixel identified as our home planet. In Cassini’s image looking home from Saturn, Earth and the Moon seen together are unmistakable as a unique planet-moon system.

A live program with filmmakers Alex Gorosh and Wylie Overstreet kicked off GAM, focusing on their inspiring new film, A New View of the Moon. The film follows Overstreet – who discovered the rewards of public outreach by accident – at various venues as he shares views of the Moon with passersby. The first-time viewers' “wow moments” include gasps and exclamations that will be familiar to any sidewalk astronomer. It’s the payoff for what we do.

The Moon has something for everyone – scientist, poet, geologist, artist, explorer. It was likely the midwife to Earth’s early life and has been humanity’s constant companion. The Moon was where we took our first tentative step into the Cosmos. We’ll reflect on all these roles with a variety of programs – to participate in and watch – during Global Astronomy Month 2018.
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Take a look at the Moon tonight. The Full Moon was on March 31, so the Moon is still close to full now. It looks awesome with or without a telescope. - ilan

 

[Ryu]

beautiful view of Moon. Thanks Ilan

 

[ilan]

Astronomers zoom in on a supermassive black hole's jets
Alison Klesman | Published: Tuesday, April 03, 2018

A telescope bigger than our planet reveals minute details in a nearby galaxy's center.

This image shows how radio telescopes on Earth and in space (left) combined to observe a very small region around another galaxy's supermassive black hole (right). In this radio image, the black hole is located in the bright yellow-green spot at the top; a young jet about 3 light-years long shoots away from the black hole.​

Supermassive black holes millions to billions of times the mass of our Sun lurk in the centers of most galaxies. In addition to feeding on nearby gas and dust, some of these black holes launch massive jets of plasma that not only dwarf the black hole itself, but the entire galaxy in which they reside. The mechanics of these jets, including exactly where they are launched, are still poorly understood, but observations such as those recently achieved using a combination of Earth- and space-based radio telescopes will help unlock the mysteries surrounding these dramatic structures.

This is only the second observation of jets at such close proximity to the black hole; the only other system that has been observed with this level of detail is M87. But the jets in M87 are much older, which, researchers say, may be why they look different from those in NGC 1275. “The jet in NGC 1275 was re-started just over a decade ago and is currently still forming, which provides a unique opportunity to follow the very early growth of a black hole jet,” said Masanori Nakamura from Academia Sinica in Taiwan, a co-author on the paper. “Continuing these observations will be very important.”
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After gobbling matter around it (stars, gas, dust, etc.), a black hole periodically "burps" these plumes of electrically charged gas. - ilan



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[ilan]

Milky Way Galaxy is Slowly Increasing in Size, Study Suggests
Sci News Staff | Apr 4, 2018

This artist’s impression shows how the Milky Way Galaxy would look seen from almost edge on and from a very different perspective than we get from the Earth. The central bulge shows up as a peanut-shaped glowing ball of stars and the spiral arms and their associated dust clouds form a narrow band. Image credit: ESO / NASA / JPL-Caltech / M. Kornmesser / R. Hurt.

The Solar System is located in one of the arms in the disk of a barred spiral galaxy we call the Milky Way.

The Galaxy consists of several hundred billion stars, with huge amounts of gas and dust, all intermingled and interacting through the force of gravity.

The nature of this interaction determines the shape of a galaxy, which may be spiral, elliptical or irregular.

As a barred spiral galaxy, the Milky Way consists of a disk in which stars, dust, and gas lie mostly in a flat plane, with arms stretching out from a central bar.

In the Milky Way’s disk there are stars of many different ages.

Massive, hot, blue stars are very luminous and have a relatively short lifespan of millions of years, whereas lower mass stars eventually end up redder and much fainter and may live for hundreds of billions of years.

The younger short-lived stars are found in the disk of the Galaxy, where new stars continue to form, whereas older stars dominate in the bulge around the Galactic center and in the halo that surrounds the disk.

Some star-forming regions are found at the outer edge of the disk, and models of galaxy formation predict that the new stars will slowly increase the size of the Galaxy they reside in.

One problem in establishing the shape of the Milky Way is that we live inside it, so astronomers look at similar galaxies elsewhere as analogues for our own.

Astronomer Cristina Martínez-Lombilla and co-authors set out to establish whether Milky Way-like galaxies are really getting bigger, and if so what this means for our own Galaxy.

They used the ground-based SDSS telescope for optical data, and the two space telescopes GALEX and Spitzer for near-UV and near-IR data respectively, to look in detail at the colors and the motions of the stars at the end of the disk found in the other galaxies.

They measured the light in these regions, predominantly originating from young blue stars, and measured their vertical movement (up and down from the disk) of the stars to work out how long it will take them to move away from their birthplaces, and how their host galaxies were growing in size.

Based on this, they calculate that galaxies like the Milky Way are growing at around 500 m/sec.

“The Milky Way is pretty big already. But our work shows that at least the visible part of it is slowly increasing in size, as stars form on the galactic outskirts,” Martínez-Lombilla said.

“It won’t be quick, but if you could travel forward in time and look at the Galaxy in 3 billion years’ time it would be about 5% bigger than today.”

“This slow growth may be moot in the distant future. The Milky Way is predicted to collide with the neighboring Andromeda Galaxy in about 4 billion years, and the shape of both will then change radically as they merge.”

Martínez-Lombilla and colleagues presented their results yesterday at the European Week of Astronomy and Space Science (EWASS) in Liverpool, UK.
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I'm adding a couple of images that show the approximate position of our Solar System (labeled Sun) and something about the Milky Way's anatomy. - ilan

 

[4me2c]

“Behind a Lovely Face, a 180 I.Q.”

This is a Good Article about Someone not so well known :

https://www.wired.com/story/the-woman-who-knows-everything-about-the-universe/

...! Cool Video at the End...!

 

[ilan]

Dead Star Circled by Light
European Southern Observatory | Published: Friday, April 06, 2018

MUSE data points to isolated neutron star beyond our galaxy.​

An isolated neutron star in the Small Magellanic Cloud. ESO/NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)/F. Vogt et al.

New images from ESO’s Very Large Telescope in Chile and other telescopes reveal a rich landscape of stars and glowing clouds of gas in one of our closest neighbouring galaxies, the Small Magellanic Cloud. The pictures have allowed astronomers to identify an elusive stellar corpse buried among filaments of gas left behind by a 2000-year-old supernova explosion. The MUSE instrument was used to establish where this elusive object is hiding, and existing Chandra X-ray Observatory data confirmed its identity as an isolated neutron star.

Spectacular new pictures, created from images from both ground- and space-based telescopes [1], tell the story of the hunt for an elusive missing object hidden amid a complex tangle of gaseous filaments in the Small Magellanic Cloud, about 200 000 light-years from Earth.

New data from the MUSE instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope in Chile has revealed a remarkable ring of gas in a system called 1E 0102.2-7219, expanding slowly within the depths of numerous other fast-moving filaments of gas and dust left behind after a supernova explosion. This discovery allowed a team led by Frédéric Vogt, an ESO Fellow in Chile, to track down the first ever isolated neutron star with low magnetic field located beyond our own Milky Way galaxy.

[video=youtube;ikVDYGEa55w]https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=50&v=ikVDYGEa55w[/video]

​

This zoom sequence starts with a broad view of the southern skies and then dives towards the Small Magellanic Cloud, a small neighbouring galaxy to the Milky Way. Here we find a rich landscape of stars and glowing gas, including the filamentary remains of a supernova explosion seen about 2000 years ago. New observations from ESO's Very Large Telescopes, along with other telescopes in space, have revealed a stellar corpse, a neutron star, hidden in this region.
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A neutron star is the remnant of a supernova, a star explosion. After the explosion, the core of the star experiences a gravitational collapse, forming a densely packed mass, or neuton star. If the original star is large enough, a black hole may be formed by the core collapse instead of a neutron star. - ilan

 

[Kimbo]

Those are some beautiful pictures,,,,thanks Ilan!!!

 

[ilan]

Thanks, Laser. These neutron stars are pretty and pretty amazing. Their density is astounding. A teaspoon of neutron star would weigh about 10 million tons (20,000,000,000 pounds).

 

[ilan]

Giant sun tornadoes aren’t spinning
Deborah Byrd in SPACE | April 9, 2018

[video=youtube;_U5wQFYDE9I]https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=_U5wQFYDE9I[/video]​

The movie above from the Helioviewer Project shows a tornado prominence on the sun – what you might hear called simply a solar prominence – observed by the NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory in April, 2015. See the tiny image of the Earth, superimposed for scale? These things are big! Better data collected over the past several years by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SD0) has revealed that these giant structures on the sun do look much like earthly tornadoes. And the term tornado prominence has been around for decades, at least. But a team of European scientists said on April 6, 2018, that these structures – vastly bigger than Earth itself – don’t appear to spin as earthly tornadoes do.

Instead, these scientists said, sun tornadoes follow horizontal magnetic field lines extending out of the sun. They seem to be anchored on the sun’s surface.

Solar prominences are much bigger than Earth itself; they can extend hundreds of thousands of miles into space in contrast to Earth’s 8,000-mile (13,000-km) diameter. Prominences are made of plasma, not a solid, not a liquid, not a gas, but sometimes called a fourth state of matter in which the parts of atoms, the electrons and neutrons, are disassociated from each other, wandering freely.

A solar prominence forms quickly, shooting out of the sun in about an earthly day. Most are brief, but some persist for months.
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Solar flares are different from solar prominences. Solar flares are sudden, short-lived, more profound eruptions. They are the critters that can wreak havoc with electrical and communication equipment on earth. Solar prominences don't create issues on earth. - ilan

 

[ilan]

On This Day In Space! April 11, 1960: 'Project Ozma' Begins Search for Alien Life
Hanneke Weitering, Space.com Staff Writer | April 11, 2018 07:08am ET​

THE PROJECT OZMA RADIO TELESCOPE The 26-meter (85-foot) radio telescope at Green Bank, West Virginia. In 1960 it was used in Project Ozma, the first SETI experiment.

On April 11, 1960, astronomers began the first scientific experiment that would search for extraterrestrial life. Known as Project Ozma, this experiment looked for interstellar radio transmissions coming from other star systems.

This was the first time that radio astronomy was used to look for aliens. The effort was led by an astronomer named Frank Drake at Cornell University. He used an 85-foot telescope at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, West Virginia to check out two nearby stars called Tau Ceti and Epsilon Eridani.

Drake first pointed the telescope at Tau Ceti, but he didn't detect any signals. When he pointed the telescope at Epsilon Eridani, he did see a signal, but it turned out to be a false alarm. He later found out that the signal was created by military radar equipment and was definitely not aliens.
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The SETI project continues today. There is some talk about changing the name of SETI (The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence). Proponents of a name change suggest that the search is really for "technosignatures," evidence of technology that deliberately modified the environment and can be detected over interstellar space. - ilan

 

[ilan]

Cosmic gorilla effect could blind detection of aliens
Deborah Byrd in SPACE | April 11, 2018

WATCH THE VIDEO BEFORE YOU READ ANY OF THE MATERIAL BELOW

[video=youtube;vJG698U2Mvo]https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=67&v=vJG698U2Mvo[/video]​

Have you seen the video above? Count how many times the players in white pass the basketball. Watch the video all the way through. What number did you get? And did you see the gorilla? When researchers in the 1990s first showed this video, as part of a test of human beings’ inattentional blindness, more than half the participants did not notice the gorilla. In a way that’s similar, a new study from neuropsychologists suggests that our human culture may not have detected extraterrestrial signals because, according to the study’s first author Gabriel de la Torre of the University of Cádiz, when we think of other intelligent beings, we tend to see them through our perceptions and consciousness:

… We are limited by our sui generis vision of the world, and it’s hard for us to admit it. What we are trying to do … is to contemplate other possibilities, for example, beings of dimensions that our mind cannot grasp; or intelligences based on dark matter or energy forms, which make up almost 95% of the universe and which we are only beginning to glimpse. There is even the possibility that other universes exist, as the texts of Stephen Hawking and other scientists indicate.​

De la Torre and co-author Manuel García, also of the University of Cádiz, have an article related to this subject coming out in May 2018 in the peer-reviewed journal Acta Astronautica (view article online).

The authors – who say they prefer to avoid the terms extraterrestrial or alien and instead use the more generic term non-terrestrial – state that our own neurophysiology, psychology and consciousness can play an important role in the search for non-terrestrial civilizations. In relation to this, they conducted an experiment with 137 people, who had to distinguish aerial photographs with artificial structures (buildings, roads …) from others with natural elements (mountains, rivers …).

In one of the images, shown below, a tiny character disguised as a gorilla was inserted to see if the participants noticed.

The result was similar to those in the 1990s gorillia-video study, described at the top of this post. In other words, many did not notice the guy in the gorilla costume. But De La Torre’s study found a difference in perception of the gorilla between people with different cognitive styles. De La Torre said:

…we assessed the participants with a series of questions to determine their cognitive style (if they were more intuitive or rational), and it turned out that the intuitive individuals identified the gorilla of our photo more times than those more rational and methodical.

If we transfer this to the problem of searching for other non-terrestrial intelligences, the question arises about whether our current strategy may result in us not perceiving the gorilla. Our traditional conception of space is limited by our brain, and we may have the signs above and be unable to see them. Maybe we’re not looking in the right direction.​

The authors’ paper also mentioned another example, drawn from Dawn spacecraft images of the dwarf planet Ceres, which is famous for its bright spots. Within the Ceres crater Occator, there appears an apparently geometric figure. De La Torre said:

Our structured mind tells us that this structure looks like a triangle with a square inside, something that theoretically is not possible in Ceres, but maybe we are seeing things where there are none, what in psychology is called pareidolia.​

However, De La Torre said, there is another possibility:

The opposite could also be true. We can have the signal in front of us and not perceive it or be unable to identify it. If this happened, it would be an example of the cosmic gorilla effect. In fact, it could have happened in the past or it could be happening right now.​

Bottom line: A new study from neuropsychologists suggests that our human culture may not have detected extraterrestrial signals because, when we think of other intelligent beings, we tend to see them through the filter of our own perceptions and consciousness. There could be a range of possibilities that we’re not considering.
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I saw a panda and a large spider. I wonder what that means. - ilan

 

[ilan]

Several Mind-Blowing Astronomy Facts
Mashable | Various Sources​

1. Neutron stars can spin at a rate of 600 rotations per second. Neutron stars are one of the possible evolutionary end-points of high mass stars. They're born in a core-collapse supernova star explosion and subsequently rotate extremely rapidly as a consequence of their physics. Neutron stars can rotate up to 60 times per second after born. Under special circumstances, this rate can increase to more than 600 times per second.
Source: Swinburne University of Technology Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing

2. All of space is completely silent. Sound waves need a medium to travel through. Since there is no atmosphere in space, space will always be eerily silent. You may be asking how astronauts can talk to each other in space. Lucky for them, radio waves can travel through space. No problem there, Houston.
Source: Cornell University Department of Astronomy

3. There is an uncountable number of stars in the known universe. We basically have no idea how many stars there are in the universe. Right now we use our estimate of how many stars there are in our own galaxy, the Milky Way. We then multiply that number by the best guesstimate of the number of galaxies in the universe. After all that math, NASA can only confidently say that say there all zillions of uncountable stars. A zillion is any uncountable amount. An Australian National University study put their estimate at 70 sextillion. Put another way, that's 70,000 million million million. This figure is basically a guess, though.
Source: University of California at Santa Barbara Science Line

4. The Apollo astronauts' footprints on the moon will probably stay there for at least 100 million years. Since the moon doesn't have an atmosphere, there's no wind or water to erode or wash away the Apollo astronauts' mark on the moon. That means their footprints, roverprints, spaceship prints, and discarded materials will stay preserved on the moon for a very long time. They won't stay on there forever, though. The moon still a dynamic environment. It's actually being constantly bombarded with "micrometeorites," which means that erosion is still happening on the moon, just very slowly.
Source: Space.com

5. 99% of our solar system's mass is the sun. Our star, the Sun, is so dense that it accounts for a whopping 99% of our entire solar system. That's what it allows it to dominate it gravitationally. Technically, our Sun is a "G-type main-sequence star" which means that every second, it fuses approximately 600 million tons of hydrogen to helium. This means that it also converts about 4 million tons of matter to energy as a byproduct. Being the type of star that the Sun is, it also means that when it dies, it will become a red giant and envelop the earth and everything on it. But don't worry: That won't happen for another 5 billion years.
Source: The Ohio State University Department of Astronomy

6. More energy from the sun hits Earth every hour than the planet uses in a year. You should be sad to know that solar technology produces less than one-tenth of 1% of global energy demand. This is due to several factors, including how much land is required for solar panels to capture enough energy for a population of people to use, how unreliable it is in bad weather and at night, and how expensive the technology is to install. Despite all these drawbacks, the use of solar energy has increased at a rate of 20% each year for the past 15 years.
Source: National Geographic

7. If two pieces of the same type of metal touch in space, they will bond and be permanently stuck together. This amazing effect is called cold welding. It happens because the atoms of the individual pieces of metal have no way of knowing that they are different pieces of metal, so the lumps join together. This wouldn't happen on earth because there is air and water separating the pieces. The effect has a lot of implication for spacecraft construction and the future of metal-based construction in vacuums.
Source: European Space Agency

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8. The largest asteroid ever recorded is a mammoth piece of space rock named Ceres. The asteroid is almost 600 miles in diameter. It's by far the largest in the asteroid belt and accounts for a whole third of the belt's mass. The surface area is approximately equal to the land area of India or Argentina. It's so big, there's actually some debate over whether to refer to it as a dwarf planet instead of an asteroid, even if it has mostly asteroid-like qualities. Ceres piques our interest specifically, as water in the form of ice has been spotted on its surface. An unmanned spacecraft named Dawn has been orbiting the space rock since 2015.
Source: TheGuardian.com
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Ceres was disovered in 1801. It has enjoyed different classifications over the years: asteroid, comet, dwarf planet, planet. - ilan

 

[ilan]

Hubble finds an Einstein ring
SPACE | April 11, 2018

The arcs you see at the center of this Hubble Space Telescope image are created by the light of distant galaxies, distorted to form what’s called an “Einstein ring.”​

Image via ESA/Hubble/NASA.

This image is packed full of galaxies! A keen eye can spot exquisite elliptical galaxies and spectacular spirals, seen at various orientations: edge-on with the plane of the galaxy visible, face-on to show off magnificent spiral arms, and everything in between.

With the charming name of SDSS J0146-0929, this is a galaxy cluster — a monstrous collection of hundreds of galaxies all shackled together in the unyielding grip of gravity. The mass of this galaxy cluster is large enough to severely distort the space-time around it, creating the odd, looping curves that almost encircle the center of the cluster.

These graceful arcs are examples of a cosmic phenomenon known as an Einstein ring. The ring is created as the light from distant objects, like galaxies, passes by an extremely large mass, like this galaxy cluster. In this image, the light from a background galaxy is diverted and distorted around the massive intervening cluster and forced to travel along many different light paths toward Earth, making it seem as though the galaxy is in several places at once.
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Very cool: The gravity of the galaxy in front is massive enough to deflect light that is coming from behind it, creating this glowing ring. - ilan

 

[ilan]

Meet M13, the Great Cluster in Hercules
Bruce McClure in CLUSTERS NEBULAE GALAXIES | April 11, 2018

Many stargazers call it the finest globular cluster in the northern half of the heavens. It’s M13, also known as the Great Cluster in Hercules.

The heart of M13, aka the Great Cluster in Hercules, a globular star cluster and one of our Milky Way galaxy’s oldest inhabitants. This image was acquired by the Advanced Camera for Surveys on the Hubble Space Telescope.​

The Great Cluster in the constellation Hercules – also known as Messier 13, or M13 – is considered to be the finest globular cluster in the northern half of the heavens. It’s found in a star pattern called the Keystone – a lopsided square within the constellation Hercules – between the two brightest stars of northern spring and summer, Vega and Arcturus.

At mid-northern latitudes, the M13 cluster can be found in the sky for at least part of the night all year round. It’s up part of the night in April, and all night long in May, June and July. In August and September the Hercules cluster is still very much a night owl, staying up till after midnight.

When you gaze at M13 or other globulars, you are looking at stars that are thought to be 12 to 13 billion years old. That’s almost as old as the universe.

M13 is not the easiest of sky objects to spot, but once you find it, you’ll be able to go back to it again and again. It’s located in the constellation Hercules, between summertime’s two brightest stars, Vega and Arcturus.

The bright stars Vega in the constellation Lyra and the orange star Arcturus in the constellation Bootes are located on either side of the constellation Hercules. Notice the squarish pattern within Hercules. This pattern is called the Keystone. M13 is located along one of the borders of the Keystone.​

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This beautiful globular cluster is designated M13. The M means it appears in a catalogue compiled by Charles Meisser (1730-1817), who was a pioneering observer of comets. There are estimated to be in the neighborhood of 300,000 stars in this cluster. - ilan

 

[ilan]

Asteroid buzzed Earth this weekend
Eddie Irizarry in SPACE | April 16, 20182018

GE3 swept by at half the moon’s distance Sunday, just hours after being detected. Its size is 3 to 6 times that of the space rock that penetrated the skies over Chelyabinsk, Russia, in 2013.​

Illustration of the orbit of asteroid 2018 GE3. The orbit appears to extend to the inner part of the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Image via Tomruen/Wikimedia Commons.

A medium-sized asteroid buzzed by Earth just hours after being detected this weekend. First observed at Catalina Sky Survey in Arizona on Saturday, April 14, 2018, the asteroid – which has been labeled 2018 GE3 – swept past us at about half the Earth-moon distance early Sunday morning according to clocks in North America. Closest approach to Earth occurred at around 2:41 a.m. EDT (6:41 UTC; translate UTC to your time) on April 15.

Its closest point to Earth was just 119,500 miles (192,317 km) away. That’s in contrast to the moon’s quarter-million-mile (400,000 km) distance. According to NASA, hours later, at about 5:59 a.m. EDT on April 15, the space rock passed even closer to the moon than it had to Earth.

With an estimated diameter of 157 to 361 feet (48 to 110 meters), asteroid 2018 GE3 has about three to six times the diameter of the space rock that penetrated the skies over Chelyabinsk, Russia in February 2013, causing some 1,500 people to seek treatment for injuries, mostly from flying glass.

Asteroid 2018 GE3, an Apollo type earth-crossing asteroid, was flying through space at 66,174 miles per hour (106,497 km/h).

If the asteroid had entered our atmosphere, a great portion of the space rock would have disintegrated due to friction with the air. However, some of an asteroid this size might have gotten through to Earth’s surface, and an asteroid this big is capable of causing some regional damage, depending on various factors such as composition, speed, entry angle, and location of impact. It might make you feel better (or worse) to know that asteroids enter Earth’s atmosphere unnoticed on a fairly regular basis.

For example, in 2014, scientists announced 26 atom-bomb-scale asteroid impacts since 2000 that were discovered in data from the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization, which operates a network of sensors that monitors Earth around the clock listening for the infrasound signature of nuclear detonations. Earth’s atmosphere does a good job of protecting us from incoming asteroids. Most explode high in the atmosphere, or over an ocean, and therefore do no harm.

Was Earth in danger from 2018 GE3? Not this time, but a Chelyabinsk-type event can clearly repeat. Astronomers have increased their programs to seek near-Earth asteroids like 2018 GE3, but sometimes – like this time and as in 2013 with the Chelyabinsk event – asteroids do still surprise us.

A preliminary analysis of the orbit of 2018 GE shows this is the closest this particular space rock has come to Earth at least since 1930.
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I thought I felt a breeze yesterday. - ilan