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A comment on NASA predicts asteroid to make one of closest approaches to Earth ever recorded.

Re:NASA predicts asteroid to make one of closest approaches ... by UI_at_80x24 on Thursday January 26, 2023 @11:40AM (#34534070)
When I was about 10 years old 1983 (+/- 2 years) I was 'camping' in my backyard with a friend. While we were running around in the dark we saw an asteroid bounce off the atmosphere and either enter below my visual horizon or pass by the earth.

It was about the size golfball/chicken egg held at arms length. I was facing East-South-East (approximately).

It was a bright red, and I could see impact craters on the surface of it. There were no 'flames/fireballs' from orbital entry friction.

The entire incident lasted less then 10 seconds (but this is very much a guess, and impacted by the time-frames involved).

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Re:NASA predicts asteroid to make one of closest approaches ... by rpledge on Thursday January 26, 2023 @11:42AM (#34534120)
There's no way you saw any impact craters on an asteroid naked eye. You have a false memory
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Re:NASA predicts asteroid to make one of closest approaches ... by lamacase on Thursday January 26, 2023 @12:12PM (#34534708)
A golf ball is around 4cm, and an arm's length is around 70cm. To be the same apparent size, it would have to maintain that same ratio. The atmosphere is like 50-100km thick (highest weather balloon flight was >50km) so you would have to be seeing it at a further distance than that.

So your asteroid would have to be at least several kilometers across. That approaching dino-killer size. You're definitely misremembering some part of this.

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Re:NASA predicts asteroid to make one of closest approaches ... by wrycoder on Thursday January 26, 2023 @06:01PM (#34540116)
It's not impossible. How closely were we tracking 3 km objects in 1983?
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Re:NASA predicts asteroid to make one of closest approaches ... by zardo on Friday January 27, 2023 @06:39PM (#34553321)
The US and USSR were looking very closely for much smaller objects leaving and entering the atmosphere.
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Re:NASA predicts asteroid to make one of closest approaches ... by wrycoder on Friday January 27, 2023 @08:09PM (#34554019)
True, but are they finding them - especially the ones on the sun side of our orbit? Remember, this one was found by an amateur. Now, NASA is claiming authority for it.
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Re:NASA predicts asteroid to make one of closest approaches ... by psychphysic on Thursday January 26, 2023 @02:25PM (#34537343)
Rare instance where this story would be more believable if you'd said it was a alien space ship.
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