Astronomer's Corner. Small Asteroid to Whip Past Earth. June 27th.

New to A Writer’s Mind? If so, let me fill you in. This blog is mostly about authors and everything they have to offer. On occasion, and read within the ‘Astronomer’s Corner’ of my quarterly newsletter, is the latest happenings in outer space. Yep, it’s a passion of mine that my readers have to suffer through. But seriously, how much FUN is it???

So, in that I’ve an opening before this Monday Covers It feature, I’m going to share the latest…

Have you heard?

By NASA/JPL….

“Near-Earth asteroid 2011 MD will pass only 7,500 miles (12,000 kilometers) above Earth's surface Monday, June 27, at about 9:30 a.m. EDT. The asteroid was discovered by the LINEAR near-Earth object discovery team observing from Socorro, New Mexico.

The top diagram shows the trajectory of 2011 MD projected onto Earth's orbital plane over a 4-day interval. The diagram below it gives another view from the general direction of the Sun that indicates that 2011 MD will reach its closest Earth approach point in extreme southern latitudes (in fact, over the southern Atlantic Ocean).

This small asteroid, only between 15 and 65 feet (5 and 20 meters) in diameter, is in a very earthlike orbit about the Sun, but an orbital analysis indicates there is no chance it will actually strike Earth on Monday. The incoming trajectory leg passes several thousand kilometers outside the geosynchronous ring of satellites and the outgoing leg passes well inside the ring. One would expect an object of this size to come this close to Earth about every 6 years on average. For a brief time, it will be bright enough to be seen even with a modest-sized telescope.”

Sky here. I’m off the northeast coast of the United States, telescope aimed and ready. Yeah, yeah, I’m probably out of range but darn if I won’t be dragging my five year old out with me to see what we can spy! Can’t hurt, right?

To all of you astronomers out there that can view this… Nice! I love how we hear about these near asteroids mere days before they pass.

See you Monday morn when I welcome Faith V. Smith over.

~Sky