Celestia Forums

Hello Chuft-Captain, Thanks for the update! The new orbit, after the close passage, is maybe still uncertain, because it depends on the precise conditions under which the passage occurred. To determine the new orbit better, the astronomers need more observations and for that you first have to be abl...

Hello all, This is an old thread I know, but what I wanted to post is a very similar subject to this old post of mine: another upcoming, very close pass of a small NEO body, I called it the Valentine's Day asteroid. NASA has made a nice simulation video of it but with Celestia we can do much the sam...

Hello Buzz, I think it is part of the short film "Powers of Ten", rather well known I think, by a filmers-couple Charles and Ray Eames and based on a picture book with the same name from Philip and Phyllis Morrison. The film was shown here in Holland a few years back in one of the 'Zomergasten' tele...

As a curiosity two small NEOs are relatively close to the earth these days, 2007 BD and 2007 BB. Both not much more than 10 meters in diameter, so no big threat even if they would be on impact course, 2007 BD passes at 0.8 LD and 2007 BB at 1.0 LD. http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/ca/ has a detailed list of ...

Hello rocketman, My apologies if I don't undersytand what exactly you would want to know, but reading this, could there be some mix-up of the use of equatorial and ecliptic coordinate systems? If at JSC the equatorial system is used, you have to get other quaternion conversions for Celestia. Celesti...

Just as a curiosity, with todays better asteroid search programs I think I can see more small objects discovered and reported on the net, that come in the vicinity of Earth. Usually they are too small to pose any big danger even if they were on an impact course, but sometimes they come pretty close!...

Hello all, Here is a link to the New Scientist article: http://www.newscientist.com/channel/fundamentals/mg18925331.200.html "At the moment, the main reason for taking the proposal seriously must be Heim theory's uncannily successful prediction of particle masses. Maybe, just maybe, Heim theory real...

Aarrgh, Kzin captain wants his human slaves to do their high school exams again! Punishment for the monkey boys! The vegetarian grass eaters, they haven't even got their own gravity drives yet! I would like to add a little to globemakers explanation, that an object in orbit also is under constant ac...

This is the version I actually had meant to give, Apophis K with orbital elements valid about 24 hours before the close approach (to take into consideration more of the gravitational attraction of the earth) # Version Apophis K, JPL data, solution JPL#120 # period directly from JPL Horizons data # A...

Apophis postscript #2: Curious as it may sound, the close fit achieved by the "ApophisE" orbit was probably pure coincidence of picking exactly the right wrong parameter! Tropical year should have been sidereal and the calculation of the period was wrong. The elements were for epoch 2006, not 2029 b...

Selden, thanks for the comments! Fightspit luckily that is still far off in the future! By the way, as I'm on dial-up link, this animation is okay but unfortunately some of the threads with a lot of images don't always load. But that is just minor detail. I should report there is small bug in my Neo...

Hello! It is a nice picture of the near miss, but a bit frightening too! 35000 km is still very close, and the geosynchronous sattelites are in some danger too in 2029, they are at 36000 km high. Because the asteroid passes close to earth and moon in 2029, as can also be seen in the Celestia simulat...