Thursday 17 March 2011

Close Encounter with 2011 EB47

Asteroid narrowly misses Earth-facing side of Moon!

2011 EB47 is the official name given by NASA to the "house-sized asteroid"* discovered two days ago and which NASA described as having "zoomed by the Earth" about 21:47 GMT yesterday.

In reality the asteroid "zoomed" by the Earth-facing side of the Moon, its intersecting path being roughly 7/8ths of the way to there.

So what shall we name this lump of heavenly rock?

'2011 EB47' hardly does our visitor justice.

There can be only one answer. And that is: **Montezuma

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*14 mtrs diameter is the official size of the object.
**Montezuma II (1479-1520 last Aztec emperor of Mexico).

4 comments:

  1. Or maybe Montezoomer?

    Thanks for your reply re farming. Maybe it is only in this country that farming has become so unpopular. A lot of farmers go out of farming every week - they consider it too hard work for too little return.

    My farmer has been in it since the day he was born and could think of no other life. Retirement means cutting down on livestock and stopping milking - but he still spends each day in the fields, tidying, fencing, chopping wood, generally looking around and spotting wildlife - and he will do that until the day he dies.

    As you say - so much is happening in the world at present that our brains get satiated with it all. There is a lot to be said for walking round the peaceful fields and trying to put world events to the back of one's mind.

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  2. Hello Pat. Keeping active. That's good. As in Yorkshire, Wales, and such places the situation for the Alpine hill farmers is not the best and also for some of the reasons you outlined on your blog.

    Don't fill your head to bursting point with worry. We can't change the world. We can only do what we believe to be for the best. And that means we must look after and care for the planet. After all, it's the only one we've got.

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  3. Interesting - I hadn't heard about that.

    I think all space objects should be named after creatures from Japanese monster movies.

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  4. CC, plenty of them out there - unnamed bodies I mean :)

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