... run to the bunkers!
February, 2013 and the buzz was about a smallish chunk-o-rock fashionably named "Asteroid 2012 DA14" that was about to skim past Earth at only about 27,700 km distant (below Geo-stationary satellite orbit 36,000km). It is about 30 meters across and weighs an estimated 40,000 tonnes.
Since Australia was going to be in the right place at the right time as it passed by on the 16th, I decided to set the alarm to 'blerk'-in-the-morning and get out and try to spot it.
So at 'blerk'-o-clock that Saturday morning, I rushed out into the pre-dawn gloom with Dobby and a printout of a skymap sourced from the web and started making fairly wild guesses at where it might be at that time. Using the 25mm eyepiece I hoped that there would be enough field of view to catch a glimpse.
So, did I see it? I don't know...
I did catch a fleeting (about 2 second) sighting of a small, not overly bright, point of light move across the field of view. It was about what I expected, but I would have to allow for the possibility that I caught a satellite instead of the asteroid.
But, it was fun trying and I like to think that it probably was a success.
Here's a NASATelevision clip with some flyby footage.
Then I got inside and heard about Chelyabinsk in Russia... hol...lee... cow!
