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Rare Full Moon and Asteroid Flyby to make This Christmas Special
Posted On Dec 24 2015
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Additionally, this year Christmas Day will have a full moon, something that people will be witnessing after several years.
Wednesday, 23 December 2015 04:41 How the moon will appear on Christmas, 2015. This year’s peak will happen on Friday, at exactly 3:11 a.m., OR time.
As per NASA’s website, “The moon on such an occasion is worth remembering as the moon is more than just a celestial neighbor”.
Your comment will be submitted for approval by an administrator. The asteroid will flyby earth at a safe distance and won’t come anywhere near impacting the planet, NASA added.
Southeast is also expecting partly cloudy skies for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day so you’ll have a good opportunity to see the full moon early in the morning.
According to the Los Angeles Times, China’s Chang’e 3 rover is studying a geologically young area of the lunar surface, where it has turned up a type of rock that sheds light on the moon’s history. This creates a 180-degree angle so that the entire Earth-facing half of the moon is completely illuminated by sunlight, which is what we see as a full moon.
“We now have “ground truth” for our remote sensing, a well-characterised sample in a key location”, said Bradley L Jolliff, the Scott Rudolph Professor of earth and planetary sciences at Washington University in St Louis.
But as it zips by, scientists will be able to make observations that are “an important preview” for a much closer flyby in 2018, says NASA’s Goldstone Observatory in California’s Mojave Desert.
Asteroid 2003 SD220 will safely fly past Earth today (24 December) at a distance of 6,8-million miles (11-million kilometers).
Despite having no immediate threat, scientists with NASA and also the North American Aerospace Defense Command in Colorado Springs, Colorado, will be monitoring the asteroid via radar, local television station KCNC reported.
“Even though it will only be 99 per cent full, your best bet for seeing the full moon would be on Christmas eve night, 12 hours before”.
