One of these days… one of these days….
From SpaceWeather:
ASTEROID DOUBLE FLYBY: On Sept. 7th, a newly discovered asteroid about the size of a large grey whale flew over the south pole of Earth only 25,000 miles away. For scale, that’s only a few thousand miles above the orbits of typical geosynchronous satellites. After the Earth flyby, the space rock turned and headed in the general direction of the Moon, executing a wider flyby of 179,000 miles on Sept. 8th. Where will this asteroid go next?
[…]
Where to next? This asteroid spends all of its time in the inner solar system. In Oct. 2017 it will fly by Venus. In March 2020 it will fly by Venus again before returning to Earth in June of the same year. Not one of these encounters is expected to result in an impact. [So they tell us.] This table from NASA lists the many close approaches of 2016 RB1.
Asteroid 2016 RB1 was discovered on Sept. 5th by astronomers using the 60-inch Cassegrain reflector telescope of the Catalina Sky Survey, located at the summit of Mount Lemmon in the Catalina Mountains north of Tucson, Arizona. [How many more are out there which they haven’t discovered, I wonder.]
Visit http://spaceweather.com for answers and photos of today’s encounter with Earth.
To the Moon, huh?
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Trump will knock it down.
Reflectors rock. Refractors, meh.
Reflectors… Refractors… All made in Taiwan!
Bang, zoom!
“Reflectors rock. Refractors, meh.”
Mirror mirror on the stall,
Will that rock in heaven fall?
Will that rock go bumpity-thumpty,
And make the earth into a Humpity-Dumpity?
Parabolic trajectory when its done
Will be the path of RB1
As it air-kisses the Earth
Like two young girls of snooty birth.
Mirror mirror telescope,
Will you become a collide-a-scope?
Reflect on that you polished glassy,
The refractor is just a little bit more sassy.
No reflector was ever brought to baseball to see the actors.
All the spyglasses in the stands are really refractors.
What else would one use to view the home run,
If the Earth got hit by RB1?
Alas, the Heavenly Batter’s eye
Saw the one in the name as an I
And that may be why
The strike was recorded as an RBI.
The Chicken
Thanks for the Honeymooners, Father. One can never have enough Ralph Kramden :)