Did Anyone See Asteroid "Beast" Fly By Earth?

[Creator]

Did anybody see the "beast" as it whizzed by Earth today at 31,000 mph ?
Just checking to make sure we didn't get hit.

Oops; maybe I should have put this under "stargazing & Telescopes"

 

[davenn]

well its Monday night here and my seismograph didn't record sny quakes
so I guess that the NASA prediction that it posed no threat to Earth held true

Dave

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

I missed it! Sounds like a fun one!

asteroid the length of a New York city block will zip past Earth on Sunday, June 8, coming within 770,000 miles of our planet at its closest approach.

Nicknamed "the Beast," it has been designated a "potentially hazardous asteroid" because of its size (between 800 and 1,300 feet) and because of how close it will get to Earth.

No need to worry though. There is absolutely no chance it will hit us (as 770,000 miles is still more than three times the distance between the moon and Earth).

http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-asteroid-the-beast-sunday-20140606-story.html

 

[Creator]

well its Monday night here and my seismograph didn't record sny quakes
so I guess that the NASA prediction that it posed no threat to Earth held true

Dave

Thanks for the assurance , Dave ...maybe I need to add a seismograph to my astronomical instrument collection...or my astronomical instrument "wish list". It poses no threat, but they insist on calling it a "Potentially" Hazardous Asteroid, PHA.. Hmmm. ;)
Creator

 

[Creator]

I missed it! Sounds like a fun one!
http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-asteroid-the-beast-sunday-20140606-story.html

Greg; thanks for the info; apparently it only achieved a maximum magnitude of about 13.7.
Seems I thought I read that it was originally thought to be 30 to 40 miles across when discovered a few months ago using the Wide Field Infrared (whatever) Survey scope. But I think I probably read it wrong. I wondered how such a large error could have arisen, (seeing it is ONLY the size of a Nimitz Class Aircraft Carrier.)
Apparently the velocity is lower than that of Earth speed around the sun because the asteroid is overtaking the Earth in its orbit...so a slower relative speed.
Creator

-- "Its bad luck to be superstitious." --

 

[PhysicoRaj]

The radar image of this 'Beast' :

http://news.discovery.com/space/asteroids-meteors-meteorites/radar-reveals-beautiful-face-of-an-asteroid-beast-140612.htm

 

[Creator]

Cool; nice pics Raj.

...Looks like a hole in the middle...shoulda named it the donut asteroid.
...

 

[Borek]

I missed it!

No, it missed you.

Looks like a hole in the middle...shoulda named it the donut asteroid.

For some reason it looks to me like a Venus of Willendorf (or one of her numerous cousins).

 

[Deager]

I live in Florida and on Sunday night June 8 (Monday morning really) at 2:15 I was sitting on my lanai having a smoke when a HUGE white ball went flying across the sky. I mean huge...not what I see when I see a falling star. I watched it go across my field of vision...it had a tail and it seemed to be glowing green/blue at the front. I hadn't heard of The Beast at all...but was so amazed by this huge thing that I got on my computer and was shocked that this is what I might have witnessed. I've looked at dozens of sights, but no one seems to have taken a pic of it (oh how I wish I had...! I'd love to look at that sight forever!). I tried to find out the trajectory of it...but all I could find was the path in relation to stars and planets. I wanted to know if it was supposed to go over Florida at that time. I can't find that info anywhere...or any pics (other than NASA's radar images) anywhere out here. Could that have been what I saw? It was so huge...I thought it might be a plane going down and I fully expected a big boom and some shaking...but nothing happened. What do you think...did I see it??

 

[PhysicoRaj]

I don't think it was the beast.. might be some other meteor. The beast is an asteroid! And it missed the Earth pretty much. Want to refer this? : https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=757497

 

[Borek]

The Beast - despite being huge and close - was pretty faint. On some random web page I found information its magnitude was around 13.7 - which means you need a decent glass to be able to see it (something like a 10" reflecting telescope).

What you describe sounds definitely as something in the atmosphere, the Beast was over three times more distant than the Moon.

 

[PhysicoRaj]

Deager might have seen this:

 

[Deager]

Raj, odd little chart. Guess the closest to what I saw was a fireball...although it was green and blue and not red and orange. Much more like the pic above. And what is that? And when? The tail was much more white than the fiery colors in the pic, the front is almost exactly what I saw. Thanks for your post.

 

[davenn]

That meteor pic falls within the Bolide - fireball range as at the lower left corner of the chart :)

2 things that will have some effect on the colours seen are the speed through the atmosphere
and the mineral composition of the meteor


Dave

 

[Deager]

Thanks Dave. That was a cool pic. I'll have to dig around and see if there are any pics out here of the one I saw that night. I couldn't be the only person that saw it...my first fireball!

 

[jim hardy]

Did you notice any sound?

In early 70's i saw a similarly huge meteor track(also in Florida) but was unsure if the accompanying sound was real or a figment of my imagination - because it didnt make any physics sense for sound to travel that fast.
Later my grandmother described witnessing an intense meteor shower as a little girl in Missouri, around 1900, also accompanied by sound. She described a "phfffft" accompanying the large ones, which is what i thought i'd heard.
That set me to wondering(for four decades now) and I've since seen several reports of sound accompanying meteors.

This recent article offers a plausible explanation...

http://www.livescience.com/38651-meteor-sound-electrophonics-perseids.html

Skywatchers hearing things

As recently as the 1970s, people who reported hearing a sound as a meteor passed were routinely dismissed as crackpots, according to the report by Keay, published in the journal Asteroids, Comets, Meteors.

But after a large meteor passed over New South Wales in 1978, hundreds of anecdotal reports from people who claim they heard the meteor flooded the news media. Keay analyzed 36 of these reports and drew some important conclusions.

Meteors obviously release electromagnetic radiation in the visible portion of the spectrum, but the fact that they also release very low frequency (VLF) radio waves, below 30 kilohertz, is less known and less studied.

Because these VLF radio waves travel at the speed of light (not at the speed of sound), they arrive at the same time observers see a meteor passing overhead. But in order to be heard by hundreds of people, Keay deduced, radio waves need a "transducer," or some physical object that could create a sound.

Under laboratory conditions, Keay was able to do just that: He created rustling sounds in ordinary objects by exposing them to VLF radiation. Aluminum foil, plant foliage such as pine needles, thin wires — even dry, frizzy hair — produced sounds that were easily heard. This phenomenon is known as electrophonics.

Wire-framed eyeglasses seem to be particularly sensitive to VLF radiation: "When I was out [viewing the Leonid meteor showers in 1999], I had my head back on the ground and heard a sizzling sound," one observer reported. "My head was close to grass and leaves and I wear wire-frame glasses as well. The sound was definitely simultaneous with the observation of a rather large streak."...

The sound i thought i'd heard seemed to come from the overhead electrical wires.

 

[Jonathan Scott]

Did you notice any sound?

In early 70's i saw a similarly huge meteor track(also in Florida) but was unsure if the accompanying sound was real or a figment of my imagination - because it didnt make any physics sense for sound to travel that fast.
Later my grandmother described witnessing an intense meteor shower as a little girl in Missouri, around 1900, also accompanied by sound. She described a "phfffft" accompanying the large ones, which is what i thought i'd heard.
That set me to wondering(for four decades now) and I've since seen several reports of sound accompanying meteors.

This recent article offers a plausible explanation...

http://www.livescience.com/38651-meteor-sound-electrophonics-perseids.html



The sound i thought i'd heard seemed to come from the overhead electrical wires.

I've previously noticed hissing or crackling sounds which appeared to be exactly synchronised with a Perseid meteor (especially one which went "pop" at the end of its trail), and I knew that there was no way that sound could travel that fast, but it was so definite that I decided it had to be something electromagnetic inducing vibrations in something near to me, possibly even in my spectacles. I'm glad to see that this is now considered scientifically plausible!

 

[PhysicoRaj]

This is interesting! I hope to be more observant in the future and try to "listen" to the meteors.

 

[jim hardy]

Daeger:

Here's American Meteor Society tabulation of sightings that morning,

http://www.amsmeteors.org/fireball_report/?page=6

did you note the time?

 

[PhysicoRaj]

http://www.amsmeteors.org/fireball_report/?page=6

Nice link, Jim.

did you note the time?

I think he did..

I live in Florida and on Sunday night June 8 (Monday morning really) at 2:15...

So it would be June 9th 2:15 AM local time?