Slooh Space Camera to Track near-Earth Asteroid Apophis as it Passes by Earth
Please visit Slooh.com for live images of the asteroid, if the video is on a loop
Credit: Slooh.com Apophis, Named after an ancient Egyptian mythological demon, is a near-Earth asteroid with an estimated diameter of almost three football fields (270m), will make its close approach to Earth this week. Slooh Space Camera will cover its near-approach on Wednesday, January 9th, with several live shows on Slooh.com, free to the public, starting at 4 PM PST / 7 PM EST / 00:00 UTC (1/10) – International times here: http://goo.gl/ud5UL – accompanied by real-time discussions with Slooh President, Patrick Paolucci, Slooh Outreach Coordinator and Engineer, Paul Cox, and Documentary Filmmaker, Duncan Copp. Viewers can watch live on their PC or IOS/Android mobile device.
This is not the first time Apophis has whizzed past Earth. Discovered in 2004 by astronomers at the Kitt Peak National Observatory, Apophis was calculated at the time to have a 1 in 45 chance of it hitting the Earth in 2029. Thankfully, improved prediction models have eliminated those concerns, but there still is a chance Apophis could impact Earth sometime in the distant future, perhaps as soon as 2036.
In 2029, Apophis will still give Earth a very close shave as it will fly past at only 30,000km. In comparison, The Moon orbits the Earth at 385,000km and communication satellites at 36,000km.
At its maximum brightness, Apophis on January 9th will be at a magnitude of 19.7 – not bright enough to view through a backyard telescope, but should be reasonably bright through Slooh telescopes in the Canary Islands.
Says Patrick Paolucci, “Alone among all these near-Earth asteroids that have passed our way in recent years, Apophis has generated the most concern worldwide because of its extremely close approach in 2029 and potential impact, albeit small, in 2036. We are excited to cover this asteroid live for the general public.”
About Slooh
Slooh is the leader in live, celestial event programming with weekly shows featuring the great wonders of the Universe – shown live by observatories worldwide. SLOOH is powered by its members – men, women and children in 80 countries who have taken 1.8 million photos of 46,000 unique objects and events in the night sky since our launch on Christmas Day, 2003. Slooh’s patented instant imaging technology makes astronomical objects appear in true colour and in real time over a 5 to 10 minute time frame.
Any idea how to see the asteroid on their website as all I get is connecting on the telescope view
Thats it, you should see a starfield image and the asteroid is a white dot near the centre. The stars look slightly oblate and you can see galaxies etc
All I’m getting is connecting – no starfield!
Contact slooh.com, thats all the help I can offer – Sorry
No chat box!
Try them on twitter or email or something, your guess is as good as mine
I’ll clean up my browser tomorrow, if its still bad I’ll get in touch with them. I’ll let you know how I get on
Where is the feed? It just keeps showing some pod cast from an hour ago. Wheres the Asteroid?
The feed is the webcast, they switch to a view of the asteroid every few minutes. The permannent view is on slooh.com
Coincidence this is on the same night as Armageddon??
Probably more a coincidence that Armageddon is on on the same night as this. I don’t think the meteor has been planned to coincide with the showing of a movie. Just a thought.
Some bad design guys… I cannot Like your site on my Facebook page as your advertising blocks out the agree/accept/post to FB box.
Disappointing as I would like to have shared this!
Lynda
Hi Lynda
The page design and layout have been tested in all the popular browsers and I have just double checked and it works fine.
Please reload the page or try a different browser as the problem may be local. Many thanks