Close Approach Comet Arrives in April

Comet 41P/Tuttle-Giacombini-Kresák zooms past the barred spiral galaxy NGC 3198 in this photo taken by astrophotographer Chris Schur on March 14. At the time, the glowing, green comet was about 16 million miles from Earth. This "April Fool's Day Comet" will make its closest approach on April 1, passing within 13.7 million miles of the Earth.

More Info, click HERE

February 15th Asteroid Close Encounter

I know I have spoken about this one before but now that the close pass with this object is imminent.

Here is a short video that explains who will be able to see this  object along with some really good information. 

Close Encounters of the Asteroid Kind

This week proved to be "interesting times" Because this week we had a VERY close pass of an asteroid somewhere around 100 feet across. To put that size in perspective, the Tunguska event was thought to be the same size and it leveled hundreds of square miles of forest land.

Just how close is close? The asteroid passed about 60 thousand miles above the Earth. The Moon is 384.4 thousand miles away. Yep, 6 times closer than the moon - only twice the distance of communications satellites and traveling at at very smart pace of 8.82 km/s.

Gizmodo article

First Blurry Pictures of Near-Miss Asteroid Released

Astronomers have obtained the first images of an asteroid that made its closest approach to Earth on Tuesday, showing the space rock is lopsided. The new images, was taken with the Goldstone Solar System Radar Telescope in California's Mojave Desert. At its nearest, asteroid 2007 TU24 reached an approximate apparent magnitude 10.3, or about 50 times fainter than an object visible to the naked eye in a clear, dark sky.

Thanks to Shaun Saunders for the update
Article from Fox News image from NASA/JPL-Caltech