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LAST FRIDAY, AN asteroid came incredibly close to earth.
Well, it missed by about 27,000 kilometres but in outer-space terms, that’s a short trip down to the shops.
Scary as it might have been, it was also pretty beautiful – for those who could see it. Unfortunately for us mere humans though, it was invisible to the naked eye.
So, the spectacle was lost on us until photographer Colin Legg stepped in. The Australian captured a number of images and complied this rather compelling time-lapse right at the time of closest approach (just before 3.24pm Perth time).
According to Legg, “Just after camera rolling, a beautiful meteor burned across the sky, and amazingly, passed right through my camera’s field of view, lingering while the debris train swept up and out of view. In addition, the sky was also very busy swarming with countless man made satellites. The asteroid is the bright object at left moving down the screen.”
Set it to full screen for the full effect:
(Credit: Colin Legg)
The scene was captured at 50 mm, iso 8000, f/2.2, 8 second shutter, 9 second intervals. For more see Colin Legg Photography.
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Peeyow…. Had to make that noise watchin it!
Our world rotates at 1600 km/hr,
we travel around the Sun at 107,000 km/hr.. and around our galaxy at 792,000 km/hr..
But I’ll be fcuked if I put up with this Household Charge!
Brilliant
Just remember that you’re standing on a planet that’s evolving
And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour
That’s orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it’s reckoned
A sun that is the source of all our power
The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see
Are moving at a million miles a day
In an outer spiral arm, at forty thousand miles an hour
Of the galaxy we call the ‘milky way’
Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars
It’s a hundred thousand light years side to side
It bulges in the middle, sixteen thousand light years thick
But out by us, it’s just three thousand light years wide
We’re thirty thousand light years from galactic central point
We go ’round every two hundred million years
And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions
In this amazing and expanding universe
The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding
In all of the directions it can whizz
As fast as it can go, the speed of light, you know
Twelve million miles a minute and that’s the fastest speed there is
So remember, when you’re feeling very small and insecure
How amazingly unlikely is your birth
And pray that there’s intelligent life somewhere up in space
‘Cause there’s bugger all down here on Earth
United States, Canada, Mexico, Panama, Haiti, Jamaica, Peru;
Republic Dominican, Cuba, Caribbean, Greenland, El Salvador too.
Puerto Rico, Columbia, Venezuela, Honduras, Guyana, and still;
Guatemala, Bolivia, then Argentina, and Ecuador, Chile, Brazil…
Animaniacs taught me so much.
I wonder if an asteroid was on a collision course with Earth. Would there be a plan on how to stop it. I doubt it
A well plced trampoline is the best I can think of.
It’ll probably involve AC Milan. If they can stop Barcelona ………
Be a huar if it hit westmeath
Chuck Norris’s erect penis could stop it.
We could just send out a few Anglo Irish bankers, if they can make billions disappeared into their black hole then a small thing like an astronomical disaster should be easy….
Right I’ll grab my coat.
Or everyone into Ned Flanders bunker..
We live in a precarious world.
And I am just a material girl…
Ah Dillon, how’s your wifes sister?
That was quick. Kinda glad I didn’t make the journey out to see it with binoculars, would have been boring and a waste of my time. Lol lovely snapshot though
Nice video. There’s so many satellites! Allot of it space junk.
But at 23 seconds there’s two satellites moving parallel to each other (tricky to spot), these maybe a pair of Naval Ocean Surveillance System (NOSS) satellites, a very distinctive pair of Spy satellites that orbit in formation, they intercept and locate ship communications.
Almost everything there is–just about all of it, is up *there*.
The good news is that we are a very, very tiny target, and we’re a *moving* target. So most stuff misses us. Most.
Not all.
Moving doesn’t really help. It’s not like they’re aiming at us.
Meteor my eye …that’s thor’s lance ! ………. l.o.l.
3.24, pm or am?
It seems to have smashed into something that disintegrated? What? Bertie’s orbiting safe vault hopefully!
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