Asteroid Mystery: Oh how it itches!!

So there I was, doing my usual evening surf around the internet, researching  for this evenings Transpicuous News article, when all of a sudden I run into this article on RT- note my highlights:



http://rt.com/news/asteroid-flyby-earth-moon-783/

98-foot asteroid flashes between moon and Earth within 24 hours

Published time: March 04, 2014 16:08
Edited time: March 04, 2014 17:34

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This NASA image shows an artist's animation that illustrates a massive asteroid belt (AFP Photo / NASA / JPL Caltech)

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Science, Space

An Apollo class asteroid is expected to whizz between the Earth and the moon on March 5. The 98-foot-wide space rock is expected to come within 218,000 miles of earth (0.9 lunar distances), creating quite the site for stargazers.

The asteroid, named 2014 DX110, is expected to make its closest approach at 21:07 GMT on Wednesday at a blistering speed of 14.85 km/s (32,076 mph). Although the space rock poses no threat to earth, it highlights the earth’s susceptibility to near-Earth asteroids.

For amateur astronomers interested in watching the flyby as it happens, the virtual telescope project will offer live coverage via Slooh, which allows viewers to peer through a telescope via the web.

DX110 belongs to the Apollo class of asteroids, a group of Earth-crossing asteroids, which pose a potential threat to humankind. The February-15, 2013, 65-foot-wide meteor, which exploded over the town of Chelyabinsk in the southern Urals region of Russia, belonged to the Apollo class. The meteor explosion was 30 times stronger than the Hiroshima atomic bomb. As windowpanes shattered throughout the city, 1,500 people were injured, but luckily no one was killed.

Nearly one year after the Chelyabinsk atmospheric extravaganza, another massive asteroid sailed past the Earth. The space-rock known officially as 2000 EM26 had an estimated diameter of 885 feet, roughly the equivalent of 3 football fields. It however, only came within some 2,094,400 miles of Earth.

Based on the orbits of such space rocks, many of them are likely originate in "the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. While DX110 will come nearly ten times closer to Earth than the exponentially larger EM26, another asteroid – 2012 DA14 – came within 17,200 miles of the Earth’s surface. In an amazing cosmic coincidence, DA14 made its near-earth flyby on the exact same day the Chelyabinsk impacter hit. Scientists say if the 150ft-wide had hit Earth, it would have had enough destructive power to level a major metropolis the size of Moscow or London.

And last week, a 400 kg meteor slammed into the moon at a speed of 36,600 mph, leaving behind a 40-meter-wide crater.

Does that ring any bells for you?  Let's jump back a few weeks ago on RTS:

Giant Meteor hit the Moon..... 6 months ago?

Sooooooooo....... apparently the "biggest meteor EVER" hit the moon....... last September.

September 11th, 2013 to be precise.  So they say.

Below is the "News" story on BBC about the meteor strike that happened 6 MONTHS ago.  Please note the large amount of  babble of nothing being said.  But also note that within the babble there are two pointed pieces of information:

"They say the collision would have generated a flash of light so bright that it would have been visible from Earth."

and

""Usually lunar impacts have a very short duration - just a fraction of a second. But the impact we detected lasted over eight seconds. It was almost as bright as the Pole Star, which makes it the brightest impact event that we have recorded from Earth," said Prof Madiedo. "

Yet even though it "would have" been seen by the naked eye on Earth, not a single report ANYWHERE from people seeing a light as bright as the Pole Star on the Moon.

Could it be that people were distracted by the fireballs in the sky?

I find it very interesting that 6 MONTHS after a very peculiar incident- one that makes absolutely no sense at all in terms of a simple meteor strike- regardless of it size- on the moon, all of a sudden NOW.... they are releasing this information.

really?   Really?   REALLY?!?


I'm keeping my eye peeled on this one as my inner itchy bump is definitely itchy!!

http://removingtheshackles.blogspot.ca/2014/02/giant-meteor-hit-moon-6-months-ago.html



From the BBC article I quoted back in February:

The explosive strike was spotted by the Moon Impacts Detection and Analysis System (Midas) of telescopes in southern Spain on 11 September at 20:07 GMT.

"Usually lunar impacts have a very short duration - just a fraction of a second. But the impact we detected lasted over eight seconds. It was almost as bright as the Pole Star, which makes it the brightest impact event that we have recorded from Earth," said Prof Madiedo.
The researchers say a lump of rock weighing about 400kg (900lb) and travelling at 61,000km/h (38,000mph) slammed into the surface of the Moon.

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-26325934


My itchy bump is still itching it would seem.  So, is the person who wrote the RT article just clueless about when a giant rock slammed into the moon, or is there a lot more to this story?  

The original report that I put out on Feb 25th already sent my inner brain bump itching with the fact that it took over 5 months for someone to report an event on the moon that should of been viewable with the naked eye (yet there were no reports of any kind anywhere that I could find)- an event that distinguished it's self  from a normal impact by the flash lasting 7 seconds longer than  it should have for a simple asteroid impact.  And now we have a passing comment in the news that there was a lunar asteroid impact "a week ago" that gives the exact same dimensions etc... as the impact that supposedly happened in September.

There is more to this story than meets the eye- that's what my itch is telling me.