Near Earth Asteroid

What is considered too close for comfort?

An asteroid measuring roughly 3 miles across passed near the Earth last week at a distance of about 4.3 million miles away.  So what is considered too close for comfort?  To give an idea of the scale of this asteroid at its closest distance to the Earth, Toutartis 4179 passed at 4.3 million miles away.  Our own moon is just 238,900 miles from us and Mars varies in distance because of the Earth and Mars have unrelated orbits around the Sun.  Mars at is closest distance is 34 million miles and at the farthest could be 250 million miles out.  Scientists state that even though Asteroid (Toutatis 4179) passed safely away from the Earth that it will return in the year 2069 and that time it will pass even closer to the Earth at 1.8 million miles.  To give an idea how much damage this asteroid could do if it collided with the Earth,  scientists state that the asteroid that would have killed off the dinosaurs would have been 6 miles across so if in one of its future runs it could cause catastrophic damage.
I for one would wish that NASA would have in place an early warning system for large objects like this so that we could have enough time to do something to protect the Earth.

Below is a video from multiple space radar images.

 

Article sources are from NASA and space.com

Asteroid 2005 YU55 - twisters & tremors in OK

As I wrote before on October 30th, about the near fly by of the Asteroid 2005 YU55 and how it will pass very close to the Earth tonight.

Here is a video from Nasa explaining how the Asteroid is tracked; http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/videogallery/index.html?collection_id=77341&media_id=119025761


I have heard reports from storm chasers of multiple Tornadoes in Oklahoma and more aftershocks were felt as well.


Here is a great video from Storm Chasers in Oklahoma, this was filmed yesterday. You can see the hail on the ground.  At 2:40 minutes in you see the Chaser talk about his car that flipped over because his steering wheel locked up on him.                                           

Courtesy of Extremetornadotours.com on youtube.

Happy Halloween!

 HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!
Besides being Halloween tomorrow, there are several events that have or will occur soon.  
On October 28th we saw the successful launch of the NPP Satellite;

Last night we witnessed a historic storm which left us with over 2.5 million people without power in the surrounding area.  As mentioned before, there were black ice conditions which led to a  fatal accident overnight on I-95. Channel 6 news also reported a few other pileup accidents on other major roads in PA and in NJ.   I am actually looking to order a full set of snow tires and wheels,  maybe next month myself.
 
Just a reminder that November 6th is the hour change for Daylight Savings Time, Fall back which to set the clocks one hour back.

Coming up on November 8th, there will be a very large asteroid that will pass by us at a closer distance from us to the Moon.  It is called 2005 YU55, which is about the size of an Aircraft carrier!  Thank goodness that Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory is stating that there should no chance that this asteroid will hit the Earth.

A final note, I have signed up to take a Skywarn class on Tuesday.  I will meet up with a class that teaches how to report storms to the National Weather Service.  I will volunteer my time and hope to help others by reporting storms.