Archive
09/15/15 – Ephemeris – Not another hoax again: This one’s a supposed asteroid collision
Ephemeris for Tuesday, September 15th. The Sun will rise at 7:21. It’ll be up for 12 hours and 32 minutes, setting at 7:53. The Moon, 2 days past new, will set at 9:02 this evening.
There is a bogus prediction from the Internet that been circulating for a month or so. I missed it until a couple of days ago because I visit reputable astronomical web sites. I check near earth asteroids on spaceweather.com, and there is nothing known as of now that’s 22 meters of larger in size that will come within 2 million miles of the Earth this month. The dead giveaway that this prediction is bogus is the fact that the impact point is specific, near Puerto Rico, but the impact time is vague, between the 15th and 28th of September. An object orbiting the Sun, like the Earth travels at 18 and a half miles a second give or take, the asteroid at a comparable velocity, so the impact time would have to be known to the second. On top of the Earth’s position, it also rotates
Times are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan. They may be different for your location.
Addendum
Here is a link to NASA’s JPL on the subject.
NASA isn’t the only authority on asteroid orbits and positions. The Minor Planet Center is part of the International Astronomical Union (IAU), and currently operated under a grant from NASA is the clearinghouse for asteroid positions and orbits. Some discoveries and positions are supplied by amateur astronomers who aren’t beholden to any government, so there isn’t any conspiracy to keep the knowledge from the public.
12/21/2012 – Ephemeris – Well, we’re still here
Ephemeris for Friday, December 21st. The sun will rise at 8:16. It’ll be up for 8 hours and 48 minutes, setting at 5:05. The moon, 1 day past first quarter, will set at 2:53 tomorrow morning.
Well, we’re still here. The winter solstice arrived at 6:12 this morning, and nothing happened. There’s no planetary alignment. The supposed alignment with the center of the galaxy, which is 6 degrees off anyway was at its closest 15 years ago. And the supposed planet Nibiru that was to collide with the earth or interfere with the earth somehow, hasn’t shown up. Even we amateur astronomers would have seen it for at least the last 5 years. To those who say its sneaking up on us from behind the sun. I say we have spacecraft flying all over the solar system, so we don’t have any blind spots for it to hide in. So I wonder when the next prediction of the end of the world will pop up, to which I will sigh: “Not again.”
Times are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan. They may be different for your location.
Addendum
The sun at the winter solstice 2012. The horizontal line is the sun’s path, the ecliptic, while the diagonal line is the galactic equator. Sagittarius A is the location of the center of the galaxy some 26,000 light years away behind a black cloud of dust and gas. Created using Cartes du Ciel.
Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog 