October 31 at 20.00 Moscow time at a distance of 490 thousand. km of the Earth will fly a large near-Earth asteroids 2015 TB145. These spans such large bodies on the distance of the moon’s orbit occur about once every ten years.
Join the observations of the asteroid will be on Saturday night at the Museum of Cosmonautics . At 17.00 there will be a lecture “dangerous asteroids near Earth.” At 19.00 in clear weather will begin observations in a large 46-inch telescope near Space Museum
In turn, the Moscow Planetarium offers not waste time on futile attempts to see the asteroid with a telescope and look at the stars, planets and comets in the Great Hall of his star.
There is no threat to the “stone guest” any planet or moon can not be held. The minimum distance between the Moon and 2015 TB145 is 280 thousand. Km.
The uniqueness of this event lies in the fact that the time span of the asteroid at a minimum distance will be visible only in Russia.
In the Western hemisphere at this time would be during daylight hours, and to the south, he will not be seen on the background of the constellation Ursa Major.
Even already in the Caucasus and Crimea, the maximum height of the asteroid evening of October 31 will be only 10 degrees in Moscow – 22, and in St. Petersburg for about 27 degrees. The best conditions will appear in the Urals, in the northern regions and in the European part of Russia – from 19 to 21 hours on October 31 when the object is seen overflying on the background of the Big Dipper in the splendor of 10 magnitudes.
The maximum shine asteroid is 10 magnitudes, such objects can be seen in the small and medium-sized telescopes (10 cm or more in diameter) in dark places. In urban areas will require a telescope larger: 20 cm in diameter.
The angular velocity is very high and is 15 arc seconds per second time, that is a 2-minute asteroid will fly the disc of the full moon!
The very orbit the near-Earth asteroid unusual: at perihelion, when the 2015 TB145 is closer to the Sun Mercury, and aphelion is removed almost to the orbit of Jupiter is inclined 40 degrees to the plane of the ecliptic, speed flyby of the Earth is 35 km / sec, which is significantly higher than normal values for near-Earth asteroids.
All of this is very similar to the orbit of short-period comets. It is possible that the object – this is the core of degenerate comet, which lost most of its volatile substances, and therefore the approach to the Sun do not form a tail or coma.
But with this hypothesis it can be expected that about the time of flight of an asteroid near the Earth, we can be in a loop of the particles ejected earlier during the “comet of the past” in 2015 TB145.
In this regard, Peter Dzhennskins (NASA) and Jeremy Vaubaillon (Institute of Celestial Mechanics and Ephemeris, Paris) published its forecast, according to which can be a new meteor shower from a radiant in the constellation Eridanus. Maximum activity is expected to flow about 20 pm on October 31. But Moon is located close greatly complicate these observations. The rate of entry into the atmosphere particles 2015 TB145 be the same 35 km / s.
Another uniqueness of this flight is that this asteroid – the possible core of an extinct comet – would be the first target of the updated radio telescope observatory Goldstone (California United States).
With its fresh equipment, scientists expect to achieve a resolution of up to 2 meters per pixel!
This is the most detailed map of the comet nucleus, obtained from the surface of the Earth, rather than the automatic interplanetary station. California telescope will irradiate the near-Earth object, and the 100-meter radio telescope in Green Bank (Northeast US) and the 300-meter radio telescope Arecibo (Puerto Rico) will take the reflected signal.
There are many cases when the near-Earth Asteroids discovered satellites. In the first photometric curves 2015 TB145 already noticeable similarity “Eclipse.” Radar observations will test this hypothesis.
Author – scientific director of the Astronomical Observatory of the APF “Ka-Dar»
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