On Monday, Comet 73P/Schwassmann Wachmann 3 broke in two, and now it is breaking up into smaller pieces as it headstoward the sun. There have been recent internet predictionsthat a large fragment of this comet would strike the earthon May 25, but in a new UPDATE, NASA says this will NOThappen. However, it is possible that meteor showers couldresult if earth passes through the dust cloud surroundingthe comet.
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Scientists now warn that with even the most sophisticatedastronomical scanning technology, dangerous meteorites arebeing missed and could possibly hit the earth with no warning. Professor Wickramasinghe of the Cardiff University?s centerfor Astrobiology claims that we can no longer assume that wehave decades or even years of warning for certain spaceobjects that are ?invisible? to current tracking methods.
Certain inactive comets may be covered with a type oforganic material that is loose and dispersed making itnon-reflective and thus impossible to detect. Because ofthis vulnerability, Professor Wickramasinghe suggests thatcurrent protocol for tracking objects threatening to earthneeds to be rethought to take into account ?invisible? comets.
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The Moon will became full on February 27th and this full Moon is special because it?s the biggest and brightest of the year. ?Not all full Moons are alike,? says astronomy professor George Lebo. ?Sometimes pollution or volcanic ash shades them with interesting colors. Sometimes haloes form around them — a result of ice crystals in the air. This full Moon is unique in another way. It will be closer to Earth than usual.
?The moon’s orbit around our planet is not a perfect circle,? says Lebo. ?It?s an ellipse.? At one end of the ellipse (called apogee) the Moon is farthest away from Earth, and at the other end (called perigee) the Moon is closest to us.
Wednesday?s full moon was near perigee and appeared 9% wider than normal and shone 20% brighter.
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A severe meteor storm expected to peak in November will bombard the world?s satellites with an unusually dense amount of space dust, creating the greatest threat of a meteor impact since 1966, according to NASA scientists.
The Leonid meteor shower occurs annually but this year it is expected to be a storm unlike anything seen in recent decades. The last time the Leonids produced what astronomers call a storm, only a handful of satellites orbited the Earth, so the threat was minimal.
Now there are hundreds of satellites that will be at risk. They provide services ranging from pagers and television to weather forecasts and monitoring for potential nuclear blasts from other nations.
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