[AZ-Observing] Re: Almost put on impact alert

  • From: "Matt Luttinen" <mluttinen@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: az-observing@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2004 12:53:23 -0700

Steve wrote:

>>But NO!<<

Ah, visions of John Belushi dance across my synapses. Hopefully the =
human
race will not have "The Luck of the Irish."

We can only hope that the first real meteoriod alert either turns out to =
be
wrong or the impact minor in scale because there is no chance that =
humanity
wil be prepared for such an event. My impression is that many =
Earth-crossers
essentially pop out of the darkness at the last moment so without a =
suitable
technological response "on the pad" we are merely a moving target in
"sitting duck" mode.

Hopefully in the next few years CCD technology will be cheap enough that
averagely-heeled amatuer astronomers would be able to form a search =
network
capable of pulling any potential deep impactors out of the murk. A short =
f/l
20" scope coupled with a next-next gen CCD should be able to go quite =
deep.
I wonder what the limiting mag would need to be . . .

Matt


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