Asteroid 2004 MN4 ?

[nevdawg]

Could anyone make this asteroid for Celestia because it seems to have a 1 in 300 chance in hitting Earth in 2029...

Article: http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news146.html

So I just though it would be neat to see in Celestia.

[Hoover]

The odds of impact have been raised to around 1 in 45 and it has the highest Torino scale yet reported. http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/risk/

I have researched how I might create an ssc file for this guy but haven't made much progress. I can readily download an asteroids data file in such programs as Cartes Du Ciel but have no idea on how to convert that data into and ssc file or even if its possible.

[quesarah]

"2004 MN4" "Sol"
{
Class "asteroid"
Texture "asteroid.jpg"
Mesh "asteroid.cms"
Radius 0.3 # table lookup using H

EllipticalOrbit
{
Epoch 53350
SemiMajorAxis 0.922097
Eccentricity 0.191249
Inclination 3.3338695
AscendingNode 204.559
ArgOfPericenter 126.23
MeanAnomaly 81.632

Period 323.417
}

InfoURL "http://newton.dm.unipi.it/cgi-bin/neodys/neoibo?objects:2004MN4;main"

}

[Hoover]

Thanks. Instead of giving me a fish could you teach me? In other words, how'd you do that?

Using your ssc data I found the closest approach on 3-21-2009. It was 0.072 au from Earth and from 2004 MN4 you could see the distance between the Earh and Moon quite nicely. But there was no collision.

I wonder how Celestia deals with collisions?

[quesarah]

I'm just guessing myself. As you saw, it does get fairly close. Follow the link

http://newton.dm.unipi.it/cgi-bin/neody ... 04MN4;main

(in the ssc I posted too) and note the keplerian orbit params.

It may be better to use the "full precision" orbit parameters on that page, but I was not clever enough to download the fortran and make ssc coords.

I expect we have a few years to refine this.

Sort of an apocalyptic christmas, eh?

Cheers
Sarah

[quesarah]

OK, this one is (more ) korrect. It matches pretty close to the plots I've seen - off a couple days fom JPL but its a pretty impressive encounter in Celestia too. By the way, looks like we have a good intercept chance in 2013 and agian 2021.

==Sarah



"2004 MN4" "Sol"
{
Class "asteroid"
Texture "asteroid.jpg"
Mesh "asteroid.cms"
Radius 0.3 # table lookup using H

EllipticalOrbit
{
Epoch 2453200.5
SemiMajorAxis 0.921967219665289
Eccentricity 0.191180663794791
Inclination 3.33359343937302
AscendingNode 204.574143941611
ArgOfPericenter 126.181608613875
MeanAnomaly 274.673572725691
Period 0.885264848990
}

InfoURL "http://newton.dm.unipi.it/cgi-bin/neodys/neoibo?objects:2004MN4;main"

# Period= = a**1.5 = sqrt(a**3)
# 323.3490337253 days
# http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/db?name=2004+MN4

}

[Matt McIrvin]

Well, it's not going to hit us in 2029, but it will certainly be an impressive close encounter.

Sadly, when I was trying to figure out what the effect of a collision would be, I came to the conclusion that the real earthquake and tsunamis on Dec. 26 were probably worse. If you want to know what it would be like for the Earth to get hit by a few-hundred-meters-wide asteroid, look around you.

[Guest]

The odds of impact have been raised to around 1 in 45 and it has the highest Torino scale yet reported.

I went to that site and it says the 2004 mn4 asteroid has a 1 in 24,000 chance of hitting earth between 2044 and 2103...

[Hoover]

It was 1 in 45 when the Torino number was 4. Then, as expected, when more evidence came in it was found just to be another NEO.

What I found more evident is that these near misses are being found at an ever increasing rate. It seems like a scare occurs ever couple of years now.