Astroid 2005 YU55 doing a fly-by on 11/08/11

http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news171.html

"Near-Earth asteroid 2005 YU55 will pass within 0.85 lunar distances from the Earth on November 8, 2011. The upcoming close approach by this relatively large 400 meter-sized, C-type asteroid presents an excellent opportunity for synergistic ground-based observations including optical, near infrared and radar data. The attached animated illustration shows the Earth and moon flyby geometry for November 8th and 9th when the object will reach a visual brightness of 11th magnitude and should be easily visible to observers in the northern and southern hemispheres. The closest approach to Earth and the Moon will be respectively 0.00217 AU and 0.00160 AU on 2011 November 8 at 23:28 and November 9 at 07:13 UT."

So I'm surfing through my favorite CT sites, looking for the flavor of the month, when I happen upon this tidbit. Should make for a decent light show.

I would think this is news worthy, but I haven't seen anything on my local networks. 'Hey everyone, a rock 1/4 mile wide is going to pass between us and the moon'. Might want to get your camera out. If I got this right, west coast US is -7hrs UTC, so it should be flying by me around midnight on the 8th. It really should be impressive.

The gubmint seems to think everything will be just fine, on the 9th will be the first nation wide test of the EmergencyAlertSystem. Almost forgot to add; this should be interesting as well. A test of our entire communication infrastructure including internet???

http://www.fcc.gov/encyclopedia/emergency-alert-system-nationwide-test
--- merged: Nov 4, 2011 10:31 PM ---
Come to think of it, why does there need to be a 'National' broadcast? Emergency situations are nearly always localized; fire, flood, ice storm, tornado, hurricane, tsunami, terrorist, whatever are generally unique to an area. Emergencies don't happen on a national scale, we'd really be screwed if they did. FEMA/Katrina, enough said. Maybe that's the reason right there. If a nation wide event were imminent, our fearless leader could address the nation as one to tell us how screwed we are about to be.

 

I read about that a few days ago. Can we switch off our gravity for a day to two?

 

I'm going to try and spot this.

We just need to watch out for a Mok, and a barbarian with a Sunsword...

 

Tiger cats, yikes! I wonder if he'll bring the Shark Bats with him too.

 

I'll be out theremaybe snapping some pictures, but magnitude 11 is probably not visible. Not sure what the emergency broadcast test has to do with this, though.

 

11th magnitude? That's not very bright, going to need a decent telescope to see that.