Holy Close Call Batman, asteroid 2014 RC

[Creator]

Newly discovered Asteroid 2014 RC, the size of a house, gives Earth a close shave in 2 days, coming in about 1000 miles closer than the orbits of our geosynchronous Sats ! ...Sept. 7th above New Zealand.
Details:
http://news.yahoo.com/newfound-asteroid-earth-super-close-shave-sunday-214219938.html

Creator

 

[Drakkith]

Wow, that's pretty close!

 

[Creator]

Wow, that's pretty close!

Another report puts it at just outside of Geosyn. Sat. Orbits, so I'm not sure which is correct.
In any case Southern Hemi observers with appropriate equipment might be able to catch it briefly at magnitude +11.5 traveling fast across the constellations Pictor and Puppis.
...

 

[TumblingDice]

The Virtual Telescope Project will stream the event live here:

http://www.virtualtelescope.eu/2014...-rc-close-encounter-online-event-6-sept-2014/

 

[Creator]

The Virtual Telescope Project will stream the event live here:

http://www.virtualtelescope.eu/2014...-rc-close-encounter-online-event-6-sept-2014/

Yes, thanks, Tumbling... I was about to put that in...VTP will try to catch it live starting at 6 pm EST Saturday night for those interested.

 

[Chronos]

This is yet another example of how vulnerable we are to NEO's. Granted, a house size boulder is not of doomsday proportions, but, still extremely dangerous. According to http://janus.astro.umd.edu/astro/impact/ an asteroid this size would pack the punch of a half megaton nuke, and can be expected to happen about every 20 years. The NEO program operated by JPL is intended to catalog bodies in the 1 kilometer class, so it offers no protection from mere house sized bodies. The potential hazardous asteroid catalog by NASA accounts for about 1500 objects, the vast majority of which are over 150 meters in size. More modest sized rocks are not catalogued because they are too small to be detected. A 150 meter rock would be equivalent to a 200 megaton nuke and trigger a magnitude 7 earthquake. Pretty scary stuff.