This is an animation of all asteroid discoveries from 1980-2010. I highly recommend watching this in as high a resolution as possible. Also there is no sound. Asteroids that cross the Earth's orbit are Red, approach within 1.3 AU (which seems high) are yellow. Everything else is green. It's pretty interesting to catch a red dot out by Jupiter and go "how is that going to cross?" then it just comes rocketing across our orbit.
with that many crossing our path how are we not all dead yet? are the white blips that come up new asteroids that were found?
View of the solar system showing the locations of all the asteroids starting in 1980, as asteroids are discovered they are added to the map and highlighted white so you can pick out the new ones. The final colour of an asteroids indicates how closely it comes to the inner solar system. Earth Crossers are Red Earth Approachers (Perihelion less than 1.3AU) are Yellow All Others are Green Notice now the pattern of discovery follows the Earth around its orbit, most discoveries are made in the region directly opposite the Sun. You'll also notice some clusters of discoveries on the line between Earth and Jupiter, these are the result of surveys looking for Jovian moons. Similar clusters of discoveries can be tied to the other outer planets, but those are not visible in this video. As the video moves into the mid 1990's we see much higher discovery rates as automated sky scanning systems come online. Most of the surveys are imaging the sky directly opposite the sun and you'll see a region of high discovery rates aligned in this manner. At the beginning of 2010 a new discovery pattern becomes evident, with discovery zones in a line perpendicular to the Sun-Earth vector. These new observations are the result of the WISE (Widefield Infrared Survey Explorer) which is a space mission that's tasked with imaging the entire sky in infrared wavelengths. Currently we have observed over half a million minor planets, and the discovery rates snow no sign that we're running out of undiscovered objects. Orbital elements were taken from the 'astorb.dat' data created by Ted Bowell and associates at http://www.naic.edu/~nolan/astorb.html Music is 'Transgenic' by Trifonic: http://www.amazon.com/Emergence-Trifo... Quite a few journalists, bloggers and tweeters are attributing this to NASA or Arecibo Observatory - while they do fine work they had nothing to do with this. If you write a story you can credit it to Scott Manley.
we went from a few occasional to WTF HOLY SHIT, there must be an asteroid hitting the earths atmosphere like every 15 minutes or something now damn.
Wow, I knew there were a lot of chucks of rock out there. But that is pretty damn crazy. Thanks for the find doc, I am probably going to watch this a lot just to look around xD
09/09/10 Asteroid near-misses actually common, scientists say Two asteroids that swooped past Earth Wednesday may have caught the attention of the public, but events like these are not actually rare, NASA scientists say. "This is the first time we've seen (two) combined within a 24-hour period, but that's probably because we don't know everything that is out there," said Lindley Johnson, program executive of the Near-Earth Object program at NASA headquarters in Washington. Single asteroids have been known to make such close passes, but they usually slip by unnoticed, Johnson told Space.com. In fact, with a rough estimate of 50 million unknown asteroids, a 33-foot-wide near-Earth object could pass harmlessly between Earth and the orbit of the moon every day, Johnson added. Such an asteroid might hit Earth's atmosphere once every 10 years, but because of its small size, it would pose no substantial threat to the people or property below. "They would certainly break up in Earth's atmosphere, or we might get some meteorites on the ground," Johnson said. In Wednesday's double flyby, the larger of the two space rocks, asteroid 2010 RX30, approached Earth at 5:51 a.m. EDT (0951 GMT), passing within 154,000 miles. It was estimated to be between 33 and 65 feet wide. The second asteroid was came closer. The 20- to 46-foot-wide asteroid 2010 RF12 passed within 49,000 miles of Earth at 5:12 pm EDT (2112 GMT), NASA asteroid trackers said.