[meteorite-list] The Sky Won't Be Falling On Us Because Asteroid Is Too Far Away (Toutatis)

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Mon Aug 30 15:01:15 2004
Message-ID: <200408301901.MAA01371_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/accent/content/accent/epaper/2004/08/29/a6d_astro_0829.html

The sky won't be falling on us because asteroid is too far away
By Michael Alicea
Palm Beach Post
August 29, 2004

On Sept. 29, Earth will have a strange visitor silently streaking across
the night sky. It's asteroid 4179, named Toutatis, and its approach to
our big blue marble - a scant 962,951 miles, or roughly four times the
distance between the Earth and the moon - is the closest any known
asteroid will come between now and 2060.

(Don't worry, it's close, but no cigar for this cosmic interloper this
time around.)

If you were standing on the surface of the asteroid during its approach,
the Earth would loom in the sky as large as the full moon. From our
vantage point, Toutatis will be close enough to be spied through large
backyard scopes gliding amid the stars of the constellation Centaurus
the Centaur.

Toutatis is the one of the strangest objects astronomers have discovered
in our solar system. It was discovered in 1989 by Christian Pollas,
while he was scanning through photographic plates of some of the fainter
satellites of the planet Jupiter. It is named for an obscure Celtic god
whose name is invoked in the popular French comic book series Les
Aventures d'Asterix, a series set in ancient Gaul. In the series, the
hero and his companions are warriors who fear nothing - except the sky
falling down upon their heads.

The city-sized asteroid is not just one body but two separate bodies,
about 2.5 and 1.6 miles in diameter. These objects are thought to be in
physical contact with one another, a "contact binary" relationship
astronomers think may be fairly common. Another contact binary pair,
Castalia, was observed when it passed by Earth in 1989.

Toutatis' erratic rotation also confounds astronomers. Because of its
odd shape and rotation, Toutatis lacks a "north pole." This means that
if anyone were to stand on Toutatis looking up at the sky, stars would
criss-cross the sky at a different angle each night, never following the
same path. In comparison, on Earth, all the stars we see from the
northern hemisphere appear to move in a grand circle around the North
Star, Polaris.

Near-misses such as the rapidly approaching Toutatis encounter in late
September are very common, although most go unreported because of the
vastness of space, and the amount of eyes - both human and robotic -
scanning for them.

Just a few months ago, on March 31, a rock measuring less than 33 feet
across zipped by Earth a mere 4,000 miles from the surface. Granted, if
this object had hit, it would have burned up brilliantly in the upper
portions of the atmosphere. However, the object, 2004 FU 162, was
spotted only hours before it flew past by robot telescopes designed to
pick these near-Earth objects out of the inky void.

Asteroid 2004 FH, a rock about 100 feet in diameter, passed just 26,500
miles above the Earth's surface on March 18. It was discovered a few
days before its close approach by the robot eyes of the LIncoln
Near-Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) Discovery facility.

To discover more about near-Earth objects, visit www.spaceweather.com or
neo.jpl.nasa.gov/programs/linear.html.
Received on Mon 30 Aug 2004 03:01:11 PM PDT