Good one JaundicedEye!!!

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Comet 46P/Wirtanen is visible to the naked eye, but only if you are on a mountaintop, away from city lights.
Tullio

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...and not hidden under 10/10 cloud cover :-(

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

...and not hidden under 10/10 cloud cover :-(

+1
After 2 inches of rain today.

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Seti@Home classic workunits:20,676 CPU time:74,226 hours

A proud member of the OFA (Old Farts Association)

NASA OSIRIS-REx spacecraft will reach asteroid Bennu today and will orbit it for about one year before choosing a site to retrieve a sample and bring it back to Earth in 2023. There will be a live TV coverage by NASA.

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Brightest comet of the year will zoom near Earth next week

This year's brightest comet will fly across the night sky next week, dazzling stargazers across the world. The comet named "46P/Wirtanen" is about to pass relatively close to Earth – a mere 7.2 million miles away.

Wow!

Thanks for info on Bennu, Tullio

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I just recently learned about the Stardust mission. I didn't know there had been a sample return project like that -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stardust_(spacecraft)

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The mind is a weird and mysterious place

NASA OSIRIS-REx spacecraft found signs of water on Bennu.


NASA’s Newly Arrived OSIRIS-REx Spacecraft Already Discovers Water on Asteroid

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Voyager 2 has entered interstellar space.
Tullio

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Gorgious sequence !

Comet 46P Wirtanen - Gerald Rhemann, December 3, 2018 @ Farm Tivoli, Namibia, SW - Africa
http://spaceweathergallery.com/indiv_upload.php?upload_id=149606&PHPSESSID=d3nsh7a929unaknmgofb7usas3

This year's brightest comet will zoom near Earth next week, dazzling stargazers across the world. The comet named "46P/Wirtanen" is about to pass relatively close to Earth – a mere 7.2 million miles away.

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Apr 3, 1999 - May 3, 2020

Asteroid 2003 SD220 has passed Saturday at 2.9 million km from the Earth. It is a rather large one, about 1 km wide, and was imaged by the Green Bank radio telescope after been monitored by radar from the Goldstone and Arecibo planetary radars.
Tullio

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NASA spacecraft Osiris-REx has entered orbit around asteroid Bennu. at close distance. Bennu is the smallest space object around which a spacecraft is orbiting. Its gravitational field is about one millionth of that of the Earth.
Tullio

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Not an Asteroid or Comet but, and with no apology to Pink Floyd,........."See you on the Dark Side of the Moon".......

https://news.sky.com/story/chinese-spacecraft-is-first-to-land-on-far-side-of-moon-11597495

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"Sour Grapes make a bitter Whine." <(0)>

And Dawn just keeps on giving.......Ultima Thule...........



"The first color image of Ultima Thule, taken at a distance of 85,000 miles (137,000 kilometers) at 4:08 Universal Time on January 1, 2019, highlights its reddish surface. At left is an enhanced color image taken by the Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC), produced by combining the near infrared, red and blue channels. The center image taken by the Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) has a higher spatial resolution than MVIC by approximately a factor of five. At right, the color has been overlaid onto the LORRI image to show the color uniformity of the Ultima and Thule lobes. Note the reduced red coloring at the neck of the object."

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"Sour Grapes make a bitter Whine." <(0)>

And Dawn just keeps on giving.......Ultima Thule...........

Dawn? Wrong spacecraft, wrong part of the solar system.

Thank you Captain Correction.

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"Sour Grapes make a bitter Whine." <(0)>

Obviously a snowperson made by aliens from Pluto

Where have I seen that before?

This image captured on Dec. 19, 2018, by a camera on the Osiris-Rex spacecraft shows the asteroid Bennu, top right, about 27 miles (43 kilometers) from the spacecraft, and the Earth and moon, bottom left, more than 70 million miles (110 million kilometers) away. Bennu, just 1,600 feet (500 meters) across, is the smallest celestial body ever to be orbited by a spacecraft. (NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona/Lockheed Martin Space via AP)

Please let this be a bogus story!

NASA asteroid WARNING: 460ft asteroid discovered last month headed for Earth TOMORROW

The asteroid, dubbed by NASA Asteroid 2019 AG3, will make a so-called “Earth Close Approach” in the early morning hours. NASA’s scientists at the California-based Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) have tracked the asteroid down to a 2.18am GMT (UTC) flyby. The startling revelation comes just one month after the rogue asteroid was first spotted by radars on December 12, 2018. NASA does not expect the space rock to hit the Earth anytime soon but the asteroid’s imposing size is a good enough reason to track it.

https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1071419/NASA-asteroid-warning-asteroid-2019-AG3-earth-close-approach

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