Astro-image of the day: Mars faces destruction!

[mckitterick]

Gosh: I step away from LJ for a few days and look what happens - blogomania! Let this be a lesson: No more week-long haitui.

This just in: Mars faces impending doom! Asteroid 2007 WD5 might well crash into the Red Planet on January 30, 2008.

Click the image to see the story.

Enjoy Mars now while you can, folks! It's at its closest approach for about a decade, looks gorgeous in a telescope... and you might never have the chance to see it in its complete, spherical form again. Okay, I'm exaggerating a bit with the whole doom thing, but Mars will likely get a serious facelift if hit by this little asteroid: NASA scientists calculate that it could create a half-mile-wide crater and blast into being the mother of all dust storms.

Any guesses what I'll be doing on January 30?

Best,
Chris

Comments

In The Planetary Report,

[lazscott.livejournal.com]

in Questions and Answers, the issue of near-Mars Objects is discussed.

[cmt2779.livejournal.com]

I don't really have anything to say about Mars, but I'm intrigued by the word "haitui" that you seem to have invented. It's a weird combination of hiatus, ennui, and Haiti. Were you suffering from ennui while on hiatus in Haiti?

[mckitterick.livejournal.com]

Bwahahahaha!

Yeah, people weren't supposed to know about my secret mission to the Caribbean. It was a rough time, so I ended up taking a bit of a vacation at a oceanside resort in Haiti. Ah, just what the Dr. ordered.

[will-couvillier.livejournal.com]

Well, I'd think you'd be outside, eye glued to the scope, watching an asteroid pass by Mars so close that it is pulled in and slung off by its gravity field towards a new target -- Earth.

Always felt Mars had it in for us, I did!

[mckitterick.livejournal.com]

Oh, no! We're dooooomed!

[mabfan.livejournal.com]

I remember seeing Jupiter being hit by the comet back in 1994. This one is hitting a little too close to home, no pun intended.

[mckitterick.livejournal.com]

That was such an awesome moment! I wanted to watch it through a telescope, but I seem to recall that where I lived, we had clouds that day. It was probably way better on TV anyway *g*

This one should be at least as exciting if not quite as dramatic.