back to article SPACE VID: Watch JUMBO ASTEROID 2000 EM26 buzzing Earth

If there's nothing on TV tonight, or you're suffering from insomnia, readers of The Register can always tune in to an asteroid flyby, broadcast live online by the Slooh Observatory. Slooh's cameras will start streaming commentary and footage of near-Earth space rock 2000 EM26, here and in the player below, from 6pm Pacific …

COMMENTS

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  1. LarsG

    It's the one you don't see that gets you.

  2. Paul J Turner

    Big Nothing!

    on YouTube - maybe the feed is via Hulu or the BBC?

  3. Paul J Turner

    A new type of 'live feed'...

    Where they put up a 57 minute recording an hour after the start time. Wonderful, in a totally underwhelming kind of way.

  4. Phil E Succour
    FAIL

    As big as three football fields??

    Sorry, that doesn't compute. Please ensure future Earth menacing asteroid sizes are given in El-Reg units

    1. Stoneshop
      Boffin

      Re: As big as three football fields??

      1.952488 brontosauruses (1928.5714 linguini) across

      Speed is 0.4021% of velocity of sheep in a vacuum

      HTH, HAND

      1. Phil E Succour

        Re: As big as three football fields??

        Excellent conversions, thanks. I can visualise it perfectly now

      2. Big-nosed Pengie

        Re: As big as three football fields??

        One thing that bothers me about this new and now universal unit of measurement is which brand of football it's referring to. I assume that a gridiron field and an Australian Rules field are not the same size, and that neither is the same size as a rugby union field.

        This Balkanisation of units is going to get us into trouble one day.

        1. 's water music

          Re: As big as three football fields??

          > This Balkanisation of units is going to get us into trouble one day.

          No gonna happen. It's not as if anyone wouldn't agree on a common system of units at the beginning of a big engineering project (say a Mars mission for example) and all stick to it...

    2. Mike Flugennock

      Re: As big as three football fields??

      Do you realize that if the NFL were to suddenly go out of business, Americans would be totally unable to visualize the lengths of really large objects?

      1. aqk
        Joke

        Re: As big as three CANADIAN football fields??

        No problem. Then they can measure using Canadian football fields. Even bigger!

        The Canadian field is 110 yards. With big end-zones.

        As opposed to American, where the big end-zones are usually on the spectators.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: As big as three football fields??

      " Please ensure future Earth menacing asteroid sizes are given in El-Reg units"

      And compatible units. The blighters are quoting me an area when I'd foolishly assumed the object might have a volume.

      Maths boffins! Assuming a finite area and infintiely thin object, the minimum volume is presumably nil. Is there a maximum volume you could associate with a given surface area?

      1. 's water music

        Re: As big as three football fields??

        if you mean the maximum volume enclosed for a given surface area then it would be a sphere shirley? with diameter 2*SQRT(S/4pi) where S=3 Football Pitches (or a little under 600 nano Wales) giving a diameter of some 222 linguine. So the volume would be pretty close on 16 Olympic-sized swimming pools (478620154 walnuts).

        hth

  5. Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge

    Needs hefty telescope indeed

    My 8" can do mag 14 under good conditions, mag 16 is about 6.25 times fainter, so requires 2.5 times more aperture at least, or a massive 20" scope, and that would be borderline. Roll on that 32" Dobsonian (when serious men build telescopes, they don't mess about).

    1. Tom 7

      Re: Needs hefty telescope indeed

      Where dat 32" dobsonian. WANT!!!!!

      Actually, doesn’t it defeat the object of a dobsonian to need a space vehicle to reach the eyepiece?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Needs hefty telescope indeed

        How about a 32" f2? Could just about reach that eyepiece. But the size of that secondary mirror!!!

        1. Tom 7

          Re: Needs hefty telescope indeed

          I've got a 16" f0.5 mirror (think it came from an IR detector on a missile) the secondary on that would only be 3/4" for a cessegrain and the whole thing would be about 1' long and would be mounted on my deckchair.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Needs hefty telescope indeed

            Do it. I want to see that.

          2. tony2heads
            Joke

            Re: Needs hefty telescope indeed

            what did you do with the rest of the missile?

    2. ravenviz Silver badge
      Boffin

      20" scope (Re: Needs hefty telescope indeed

      Won't you have to program in the trajectory, might be tricky to track otherwise as it zips past the narrow field of view (or are there programs already available these days?).

  6. Dr Trevor Marshall

    Live Video was great on CHROME, "please wait" on FIREFOX

    At least that was what I found. After the live broadcast had ended everybody would have been watching the same recording.

    So was the 'fault' in YouTube, in the way Slooh set up the live broadcast (there are user configuration toggles in the interface), or in Flash player??

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Today? Today where?

    "...from 6pm Pacific Standard Time today (9pm Eastern Standard Time, 2am UTC, 1pm Australian EST)."

    2am UTC today (today right now in the UK is 18/2/2014) implies that for UK residents, its been and gone. For US residents, its coming later today. I'm sure that can't be right. Which is a shame really because I genuinely don't know if I've missed it or not (I'm in the UK).

    1. PaulyV

      Re: Today? Today where?

      ....unless it's slowing down?!

    2. VulcanV5

      Re: Today? Today where?

      I thought I was on GMT. What the heck is UTC? Something to do with pasteurised milk?????

      I do wish El Reg would remember that many of its readers are English and have neither been metricated nor pasteurised. Would it therefore be asking too much for this article to be updated using Standard Received Timing, viz: "when the big hand is on . . . . . . . . . and the little hand is on . . . . . . . then the asteroid will be available to view." Thank you.

      1. Alex Bailey
        Stop

        Re: Today? Today where?

        And here's me, being British, wondering why everybody has a problem with timezones and the metric system. Are we less intelligent than the rest of the planet who do seem to be able to cope with these?

        That said, the times given for this ARE confusing. Has it happened or is it yet to happen?

      2. Francis Boyle Silver badge

        Re: Today? Today where?

        Don't worry. UTC - it's a boffin thing.

      3. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
        Childcatcher

        Re: Today? Today where?

        Thank you.

        No!!

        That Brutish Empire thing with all its gay trappings was dead around the time Keynes wrote "The Economic Consequences of the Peace".

        It just took until Maggie to actually make everyone aware that the empire had been resting for some time and was now pining for the fjords with all the smells that go with this. Understandably, she was blamed for it.

        Get over it! Adopt metric units now!! [Revolutionary Music swells]

      4. Mike Flex

        Re: Today? Today where?

        "I thought I was on GMT. What the heck is UTC?"

        UTC is what we are currently on in the UK. The BBC persists in incorrectly calling it GMT.

        UTC is derived from atomic clocks. GMT is derived from astronomical observations. These days atomic clocks are more stable than the rotation of the Earth so UTC is tweaked to keep it close to GMT, by adding or subtracting leap-seconds.

        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coordinated_Universal_Time

        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwich_Mean_Time

    3. Mike Flex

      Re: Today? Today where?

      "Which is a shame really because I genuinely don't know if I've missed it or not (I'm in the UK)."

      Yes and No.

      The live broadcast was last night (2 am UK time overnight between 17 and 18th Feb) so you missed that.

      However the telescope that was supposed to be used was frozen and the programme was strung together from recordings of earlier events and computer simulations. So, no, you didn't miss a live event 'cause it didn't happen. The video on the article page is a recording of the 2am broadcast so you can check what you didn't miss.

  8. Graham Marsden
    Happy

    Slooh?

    I thought for a moment that said "Slood" and was a nod to Terry Pratchett ;-)

  9. Mike Flugennock
    Coat

    Meanwhile, the obligatory Drudge Report headline...

    ZOMG! IT'S COMING RIGHT FOR US!!11!!!!!!11!!

  10. aqk
    Mushroom

    Damn! I mis-read the heading.

    When I fist saw this in my inbox, I read it as "JUMBO - A steroid" and was all set to get my credit card out.

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