Boffins: Spooky, spinning SPACE PEANUT butters up Earth with close flyby

NASA scientists have captured grainy radar pics of a peculiar-shaped, dark asteroid, dubbed "Space Peanut", which buzzed past Earth last weekend. Youtube Video 1999 JD6 – the boffinry name for the asteroid – made its closest approach to our world late Pacific Daylight Time on 24 July, the US space agency said. It flew past …

[WalterAlter]

Like Living on the Sharp Bend of a Truck Delivery Route

...waiting for a 20 wheel big rig to crash through the living room while watching Trailer Park Boys reruns.

[Francis Boyle]

About time

someone built that hyperspatial bypass then.

What do you mean, that's not how a hyperspatial bypass works?

[Destroy All Monsters]

"Radar imaging" of the Dark Ambient Peanut "understood to be around 1.2 miles (2 kilometres) long"

This is pretty good radar imaging ... interferometry? How does it work?

[harmjschoonhoven]

Re: How does it work?

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=PIA19646

These images are radar echoes, which are more like a sonogram than a photograph. The views were obtained by pairing NASA's 230-foot-wide (70-meter) Deep Space Network antenna at Goldstone, California, with the 330-foot (100-meter) National Science Foundation Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia. Using this approach, the Goldstone antenna beams a radar signal at an asteroid and Green Bank receives the reflections. The technique, referred to as a bistatic observation, dramatically improves the amount of detail that can be seen in radar images. The new views obtained with the technique show features as small as about 25 feet (7.5 meters) wide.

http://echo.jpl.nasa.gov/asteroids/2011UW158/2011UW158_planning.html

Image caption: Delay-Doppler images of 1999 JD6 obtained on July 25, 2015 using DSS-14 to transmit and GBT to receive. Resolution is 7.5 m x 0.5 Hz. Range increases down and Doppler frequency increases to the right. Each image contains 300 sec of data. The images span 2.5 h of the object's rotation.

[Bloodbeastterror]

What...?

They can "photograph" something 4.5 million (sorry, El Reg, MEEELION) miles away? Now that truly is astonishing. I can't even begin to understand how they do stuff like this.

[Mark 85]

Re: What...?

I'm sure the real answer is complex and technical involving radar and imaging a radar image... but for me "FM" works... aka Frikkin Magic. And it's wonderful to see these images no matter we get them.

[buckyball]

Not the Goa'uld then...

Whew, thought this was launched by one of the Goa'uld system lords. Can sleep ok now.

[Anonymous Coward]

MegaKong

15 per cent of near-Earth asteroids larger than 600 feet ... have this sort of lobed, peanut shape

So who is out there lobbing giant peanuts at us? We really need to know. Before it's too late.

[Stoneshop]

Re: MegaKong

Or someone who thinks we're monkeys. Which is not that far off, actually.

[Anonymous Coward]

@Stoneshop - Someone who thinks we're monkeys

Hadn't thought of that. Should we be feeling insulted, then? I guess if they can chuck stuff that large about, we'd best smile and take it.

[Sarah Balfour]

Re: MegaKong

If we cum from monkies, how cum theirs still monkies…?

I LOVE creatards, they make me feel intelligent. Also useful when I don't have a punchbag handy… okay.i can't ACTUALLY punch 'em, much as I'd like to, but it's an acceptable substitute. The Nibiruvians are my favourite - apparently we're not "monkies", nor lizards, we're the love children of Nibiruvian Angels. Yep, they're serious.

Gotta love the septics.

[hatti]

Aka

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