Close Encounters

Near earth asteroids have gained increasing attention in the news media in recent years. Many astronomers lament that there is not enough being done to catalog these objects, and most funding seems to be focused on making the next "big" scientific discovery.

It seems to me that knowing whether the earth is going to be obliterated in the next few days, weeks, or months is pretty important compared to knowing whether a moon on Saturn has geysers. Well, geysers on Eceladus IS pretty neat.

Every once in a while you hear about an asteroid coming close to earth. There also have been quite a few movies about the topic. There is a neat website where you can keep track of whether one of these "potentially hazardous asteroids" are on a collision course with our home planet. It can be found at spaceweather.gov. Luckily, none are foreseen to hit us in the near future. There is a list of new asteroid discoveries that are made by the various sky surveys that are ongoing. There are 2 to 3 new asteroid discoveries every couple of weeks. So who really knows if one will be discovered to be on a collision course. I think we better keep looking...