Our planetarium was down for repairs during the month of January, which unfortunately meant we had to cancel one of our public shows. This brought be great pain! However, it has been repaired after a marathon session working with the computers, meaning our February 27 show is still a go. For those of you who were unable to register for it before it sold out, keep up with our schedule as I will be posting dates for the late spring and summer months soon.
The weather up here has been terrible lately. I could probably count on one hand the number of clear nights I've seen since 2013 began, which means that my ASTR 271 (Stars and Galaxies) students haven't been up to the observatory at all. One student doing a research project with me has been up once to take images of the Galilean moons of Jupiter, but that has been it. It would be a travesty if we were unable to get up there as a class for lab - I know many of my students are eager to use the telescopes.
While we wait for the Comet PANSTARRS to make its appearance next month, in the news recently has been the upcoming near-miss of the asteroid 2012 DA14. This space rock is expected to approach within just 17,000 miles of Earth, meaning it will actually fly inside the orbits of some of our orbiting satellites. There is no danger, however. NASA scientists have said that this asteroid will miss us and never pose a threat. What it WILL provide is an excellent opportunity to study the object up close. As space engineers go about planning a manned landing of an asteroid in the next decade, being able to study these rocks up close should provide valuable information about their surface terrain, composition, rotation, and more. NASA has provided this diagram depicting the asteroid's trajectory as it flies by:
On this image's scale, the Moon is roughly as far away as the width of this blog entry (depending on the size of your monitor). For those on the night-time side of Earth, this asteroid will still require a telescope to view but it will be moving really fast. For those of us here in Oneonta, we'll be in daylight and won't be able to view it during its close approach. We'll see it as it is receding away from us by the time the Sun has set here.
For more information about the flyby, check out this article from Space.com. I'm willing to bet that the SLOOH Space Camera will be airing the flyby online in real-time too!
