Real World Asteroid Worry Eliminated
Hey Space Placers! We're ALL STILL HERE!!!!! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wimiRUHMI4&feature=player_embedded With all of the non-sensical hoopla over yesterday's end of the world, our planet has dodged a real space bullet in the form of a 140-meter wide asteroid named 2011 AG5. This asteroid was of significant concern to astronomers as when discovered in 2011 there was a real chance of it impacting our planet in 2040. Such an impact would have released 100 megatons of energy - a large city killer. Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph image of 2011 AG5. The asteroid is the point at the center of the image (circled) with background stars trailing because the telescope tracked on 2011 AG5. This single 300 second exposure is oriented with north up and east left - each background star streak is about 15 arcseconds in length. 2011 AG5 is highly variable in brightness and other Gemini observations on October 27th required longer exposures than the one shown here. ...