NEO Sunday 7th over NZ

[ZeroID]

· 2014 RC will be above New Zealand at 20.18 BST during closest approach
· Amateur astronomers with telescopes might be able to see it graze past
· Asteroid 2014 RC, which is 60ft (20 metres), is not expected to hit Earth
· But its orbit will bring it back to our planet's neighbourhood in the future
· News comes just days after Brian Cox told MailOnline that the world is ill-equipped to deal with asteroid threats

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2743450/Asteroid-close-shave-Earth-Sunday-Rock-come-TEN-TIMES-closer-planet-moon.html#ixzz3CNO1Qtex (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2743450/Asteroid-close-shave-Earth-Sunday-Rock-come-TEN-TIMES-closer-planet-moon.html#ixzz3CNO1Qtex)
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter (http://ec.tynt.com/b/rw?id=bBOTTqvd0r3Pooab7jrHcU&u=MailOnline) | DailyMail on Facebook (http://ec.tynt.com/b/rf?id=bBOTTqvd0r3Pooab7jrHcU&u=DailyMail)

At the time of closest approach, asteroid 2014 RC will be one-tenth the distance from the centre of Earth to the moon, or about 25,000 miles (40,000km).

Now just got to hope for better weather on Sunday night. Unable to find any positional data so far, the heliocentric app at NASA crashes my work IE9 so will try again tonight from home using IE11

[person]

Universe today has a writeup (http://www.universetoday.com/114298/get-ready-for-sundays-close-flyby-of-asteroid-2014-rc/). Maximum magnitude 11.5, in Pictor and Puppis. Closest approach is at 18:15UTC 7/9, so I peg that as around 4am monday morning in eastern Australia.

[38degsouth]

I managed to first spot this fast moving NEO at 2:40am this morning, and followed it up until just after 4am (just as it made its closest approach). To give an idea as to how fast it was moving, it crossed a 0.75deg TFOV in roughly a minute! --> MeadeLX90/TV24Pan. There seemed to be some fluctuations in brightness (perhaps due to irregular shape/rotation?) when its sun illumination orientation was 50% and less -or maybe it was my bleary early morning eyes! The brightness fluctuations seemed to be on a (roughly) 15-20sec -peak to peak.
Did anyone else see this NEO?
Dean

[ZeroID]

Solid cloud and way too much light over here ...

[tonybarry]

Sorry Dean, the clouds got in the way here.

Actually the clouds have been getting in the way regularly.

Regards,
Tony Barry

[mithrandir]

Brent, for future reference you can download the raw observation data from MPEC (http://www.minorplanetcenter.net/db_search) and process with find_orb (http://www.projectpluto.com/find_orb.htm). It's a bit of a learning curve, but I got the following elements:
2014 RC
Perihelion 2014 Oct 27.405715 TT = 9:44:13 (JD 2456957.905715)
Epoch 2014 Sep 5.0 TT = JDT 2456905.5 Earth MOID: 0.0003 Ma: 0.0148
M 328.56942 (2000.0) P Q
n 0.59975472 Peri. 65.89592 0.62431684 -0.78114569
a 1.39258034 Node 345.46669 0.70726409 0.56866343
e 0.4009889 Incl. 1.44189 0.33167148 0.25774658
P 1.64/600.23d H 26.9 G 0.15 q 0.83417097 Q 1.95098972
From 92 observations 2014 Aug. 20-Sept. 5; mean residual 3".408.


Closest approach at 2014 09 07.734375UTC 05:10:52.567-52:28:59.15 35337km (centre to centre).

Then of course we had a solid cloud and fog bank that didn't clear till after sunrise.

[gaa_ian]

I had planned to watch this, but as for others cloud ! I am glad you got to see it Dean.

[38degsouth]

A follow-up report by NASA of the recent 2014RC fly-by, including stating that this 'asteroid is rather small and is spinning very rapidly'. It appears that it now holds the record as being 'the fastest rotating asteroid observed to date'.

http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news185.html

Regards, Dean

[ZeroID]

Bloody Boy racer losing traction and drifting hey ? :P