The entire community of Haviland is gearing up for its first ever Meteorite Festival, "Ab Astra: From the Stars," July 7-8 on the Barclay College campus.
A Previously Undiscovered Asteroid Just Came Very Close to Earth http://gizmodo.com/a- previously-undiscovered- asteroid-came-very-close-to-e- 1785910481/amp On Saturday, a newly discovered 50-150-foot-long asteroid was s potted. Later that night, it flew by Earth at less than one-quarter of the distance to the moon. Don't panic, though. It's fine. We're fine. Everything's fine. What has people unsettled isn't only how close the asteroid came to earth, but rather, how something that large stayed hidden for so long when its path came so near to our home planet. The answer, in part, is simply that space is very big and full of lots of stuff flying around. It's very easy to miss something of importance. But in this case, the reason we didn't see the asteroid is that it travels in an odd orbit . If you look at the path of 2016 QA2 below, you can definitely see it come close to Earth for its weekend fly-by—but more broadly, its elliptical orbit means that i...
---- Scientists to drill into asteroid impact that wiped out dinosaurs // Engadget There's plenty of evidence to indicate that a gigantic asteroid likely wiped out the dinosaurs (and many other forms of life) when it smacked into what's now the Gulf of Mexico roughly 65.5 million years ago. However, what happened shortly afterward remains something of a mystery... or at least, it will until this spring. By April 1st, a scientific expedition will start drilling into the Gulf's Chicxulub impact crater to study how life recovered following the mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous period. The team will be looking for DNA samples, microfossils and rock type changes at different geologic layers to gauge both the effect of the impact and how lifeforms carried on in the hostile post-impact environment. The jackpot may be found between 2,600ft to 5,000ft deep. There, the researchers hope to locate signs of the peak ring, or the inner lip of the crater. The data ...
---- Tales of Two Asteroid Occultations: Io, Nemausa Cast Shadows Over North America // Universe Today  Up for a challenge? Over the next two weekends, two asteroid occultations pass over North America. These are both occulting (passing in front of) +7 th magnitude stars, easy targets for even binoculars or a small telescope. These events both have a probability score of 99-100%, meaning the paths are known to a high degree of accuracy. These are also two of the more high profile asteroid occultations for 2016 . Here's the lowdown on both events: On the morning of Saturday, August 27 th , the +10 th magnitude asteroid 85 Io occults a +7.5 magnitude star (TYC 0517-00165-1). the maximum predicted duration for the event is 28 seconds, and the maximum predicted brightness drop is expected to be 3 magnitudes. The 'shadow' will cross North America from the northeast to the southwest starting over Quebec at 4:27 Universal Time (UT), crossing Ontario and Michigan'...
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