The article says it was visible to the naked eye for 8 seconds. I can only imagine what it would have looked like through a decent scope.
Thank goodness for the atmosphere on earth, is all I can say.
I have read that there are around a dozen of these recorded every year, and the scientists are keen to capture more. I have been meaning to grab some data myself, but the process of sifting through many hours of video for a 'flash' doesn't appeal!
Currently there is no software available to make the task remotely humane (not that I know of at least), so one can only assume that there must be many tens of events each year that could be seen if one was dedicated enough.
A nice example of some useful scientific data that is well within the reach of the amateur...
Saw one through 16" f/3.3 in 1979 though nobody would believe me at the time - the accepted wisdom was this sort of thing only happened in the distant past.
Edit:
Wrong year, it was 1981. My old notebook records that was when I swapped out the cas secondary for the newt diagonal and triplet corrector.
Last edited by pdalek; 25-02-2014 at 07:52 PM.
Reason: Date correction
Saw one through 16" f/3.3 in 1979 though nobody would believe me at the time - the accepted wisdom was this sort of thing only happened in the distant past.
"Accepted Wisdom"
"Scientific Consensus"
"Defacto Standard"
"Best of Breed"
All terms used by the closed minded to get their way
To be fair, it took me quite some time to figure out that is what I probably saw.
It doesn't take a very big rock to get plenty of light. The typical near miss rocks you read about every few months carry a kinetic energy equal to a few days world energy production (coal, gas, oil, nuclear, etc). A Chicxulub class object is about 1000 years of world energy.
Thanks for that Luke , wish I had caught that it would have been spectacular .
