I monitor spaceweather.com carefully each day...following the reports and readings from space...the sun, solar wind, etc. The last few days have been rather quiet.
Today started the same. One little sunspot...not much on the index reports. I'd been watching the asteroid dates, for reasons I'll detail at a future time. Today....during the late morning hours, everything changed. Another asteroid is incoming, VERY close, and will be here tomorrow. Here's the info:
QG2, Magnitude 24 4.5LD from Earth, will be in our area, see the NASA diagram below. I hope you'll be able to follow the link and use the controls to watch the orbital path.
This one has an odd orbital path...very eliptical, coming in view over the Eastern sky it would appear...maybe. It's possible the view we get from Earth watchers could appear over our Western shoulder as we rotate on axis. We are fortunate to miss impact with this one...our Earth orbit tends to dip in this portion of it's daily path...otherwise things could be much different. The slightly below the ecliptical inbound, passing about 20 degrees over same, is a highly unusual inbound trajectory. It's magnitude (24, for an asteroid), is quite a bit more than usual, but possibly due to it's proximity and sighting point from Earth (sun reflects).
Okay, here's the diagram: QG2 is the blue orbit, the teal square on the right. Can't see Earth? Look closely....it's literally directly under the QG2 marker!!!!!
Play the animation:
http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=2010 QG2&orb=1 www.spaceweather.com Also of note: Two new sun spots appeared around noon est. today. Brand new, on the upper right (orbital exiting) side of the sun.
