“President Vladimir Putin said he thanked God no big fragments had fallen in populated areas.”

As I mentioned previously, asteroid 2012 DA14 is due to make its close encounter with Earth later this evening.  Meanwhile, earlier today several hundred people in the Chelyabinsk region of Russia were injured during a visitation by the god Ogdy by debris caused by the unexpected appearance of a relatively large meteor.  It’s reported that a crater 6m (20ft) wide has been found on the shore of a lake 1km outside Chebarkul, a town in the region – created by a fragment of the meteor.  …

Read more…

“comets are like cats: they have tails, and do whatever they want to do”

In the BBC’s science news preview of 2013, reporter Jason Palmer highlights a couple of astronomical events worth keeping an eye out for. In mid-February we will get another reminder we live in a (potentially) violent cosmos – asteroid 2012 DA14 will make a harmless but attention-grabbing pass near the Earth, at a distance just a tenth that of the Moon. Exactly what happens then will determine how near the asteroid’s next pass will be, in 2026. (Don’t worry, signs are pretty …

Read more…