Media advisory: Researcher can discuss asteroid flyby, viewing opportunities


Mon, 01/26/2015

author

Brendan M. Lynch

LAWRENCE — Today, Jan. 26, an asteroid one-third of a mile across will make its closest approach to Earth, safely passing by our planet about three times farther away than the distance to the moon.

Bruce Twarog
Bruce Twarog

Asteroid 2004 BL86 should be ideal for amateur observation via telescopes (typically one with a mirror or lens 4-inches in diameter or larger). It will be moving slowly enough to be seen for hours as it traverses the night sky.

Asteroid 2004 BL86 was discovered Jan. 30, 2004, by the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) survey in White Sands, New Mexico. It will be the closest approach of any known space rock this large until asteroid 1999 AN10 flies past Earth in 2027.

For those with access to a small telescope, ideal observing will be between 8 p.m. CST today and 1 a.m. CST Tuesday, Jan. 27. The asteroid will move across the sky at a rate equal to about five times the diameter of the full moon every hour.

Bruce Twarog, professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Kansas, is available to speak with media about the flyby of Asteroid 2004 BL86. Twarog’s research centers on observational astronomy and astrophysics. He concentrates on the application of precision photometry with intermediate-bandwidth optical filters to understand stellar and galactic evolution.

Twarog said the slow passage of Asteroid 2004 BL86 through the skies made it exceptional.

“For celestial objects, typical rates of motion relative to the stars rarely fall in the range most people find comfortable — that is an identifiable shift over a timescale of a few minutes. Either objects move too rapidly for telescope observation, like a meteor, or take significant fractions of a day to change position, like a comet,” he said.

Twarog acts as adviser to the Astronomy Associates of Lawrence, which is offering a public asteroid observation event tonight between 8-10 p.m. at the KU Marching Band Practice Field on West Campus, weather permitting.

For those interested in backyard viewing, Twarog suggested identifying the asteroid’s position relative to brighter fixed objects like bright stars and the planet Jupiter, which is in the same area of the sky. He said useful guides to viewing the asteroid’s location are available via Sky and Telescope and YouTube.

To schedule an interview with Twarog, contact Brendan M. Lynch at 785-864-8855 or by email.

Mon, 01/26/2015

author

Brendan M. Lynch

Media Contacts

Brendan M. Lynch

KU News Service

785-864-8855