Talk:2013 TX68

Necessary

Inconstancies. Read it out loud... Doesn't sound right. Comments....? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Capbat (talk • contribs) 02:46, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

If it were ever to impact Earth, it would likely create a large fireball in the sky and possibly an impact crater 100–575 meters (328–1,886 ft) across, assuming an impact angle of less than 45 degrees. Capbat (talk) 02:59, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Is this really necessary? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Capbat (talk • contribs) 02:57, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Closest approach date

Since 2013 TX68 has not been observed since 2013 and has a poorly constrained orbit, the date of closest approach is only known to be 2016-Mar-08 ± 2_00:26 (±2 days). Until the asteroid is recovered, claiming an exact distance and/or time is misleading. The Earthsky reference *incorrectly* assumes that the asteroid was recovered and that the passage time and trajectory are now better known than they were on 2016-Feb-25. -- Kheider (talk) 18:42, 8 March 2016 (UTC)

If the closest approach time between the two orbits was uncertain by 1 minute or 10 minutes, it would not really matter. But since the uncertainty in closest approach time is a HUGE ~2906 minutes (48 hours * 60 minutes + 26 minutes), it is significant. Earth moves a lot in 2 days. -- Kheider (talk) 15:45, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

For comparison, The time of uncertainty during the 2013 approach is about 0.1 minutes (much less than 1 minute). -- Kheider (talk) 18:51, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

Space.com

http://www.space.com/32180-asteroid-2013-tx68-earth-flyby.html also looks poorly written and dubious. The generic MPC twitter post is just the MPC's nominal solution and does NOT take ANY uncertainties into account. Sadly, this poorly researched information is spreading virally. Even the MPC shows no observations after 2013 10 09. (See bottom of page) -- Kheider (talk) 02:01, 9 March 2016 (UTC) -- Kheider (talk) 01:52, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

They also made rounding error when days. --Bayoustarwatch (talk) 02:33, 9 March 2016 (UTC)--Bayoustarwatch

I would like to ask the MPC, Earthsky, and Space.com: "When and Which Observatory recovered 2013 TX68 during the 2016 flyby?" Without this common and critical information, any source should be considered dubious. -- Kheider (talk) 02:48, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

Bayoustarwatch (talk | contribs)

(Undid last edit this a poor unreliable source)

User:Bayoustarwatch, When you reverted an edit of mine I wonder why you reverted my reference to the 7th of March for detecting 2013 TX68 because of an unreliable source, but left Kheider's change of "occur" to "occured" which he did at 13:38 hours on the 8th of March at a time when the cited reference did not support Kheider's change to the past tense. You also left "it was approaching" and "as it flew by" no more supported by reference than Kheider's change. Can you please explain your apparent inconsistency?

I reverted the "reference to the 7th of March"...I am not a grammar expert so I did see the "tense"...."JPL's graphic representation of 2013 TX68's orbit showed it was approaching Earth from the sunward side for an approach near the eighth of March with a chance of being detected by telescopes as it flew by"(also see "JPL Small-Body Database Browser: (2013 TX68)) by now it may be right...As for Space.com in the pass they have stories that were wrong(or out dated) at the time of posting... and that story is wrong(IMHO)--Bayoustarwatch (talk) 04:04, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

At the time of my March 8th 13:38 edit, the nominal pass of 2016-Mar-08 00:06 UT was 13 hours old. The later the pass, the further the asteroid will be from Earth. -- Kheider (talk) 05:55, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

User:Kheider, could you explain just what about the SPACE.COM article constitutes poor writing? I contest the claim that the article is poorly researched. For popular new sources good research means getting information from reliable sources, not having great amounts of related data about the particular claims that a reporter thinks common people would be interested in. Scholarly articles will come eventually, but the claim that 2013 TX68 was detected is reliable.- Fartherred (talk) 03:11, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

The space.com article does not mention when or by whom the asteroid was recovered during the March 2016 flyby. That is poor writing/research. With no new observations the date (much less the time and distance) of closest approach can not be nailed down. The MPC does not make observations, they only report observations from others. It is a very dubious source. -- Kheider (talk) 03:31, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

User:Kheider, you are editing Wikipedia, not a scholarly journal. How is your claim that "Without this common and critical information, any source should be considered dubious." related to Wikipedia policy on reliable sources?

Read my response above. Bad research should not be referenced. The MPC has NOT mentioned any new observations and parroting a generic tweet should be avoided. -- Kheider (talk) 03:33, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

My understanding is that there has been no observation since October 2013,[1] and the flyby date was based on those estimations. No direct observation has been reported in 2016. Cheers, BatteryIncluded (talk) 03:52, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

The information from TIME indicates that the closest approach was at 7 pm ET Monday, but it does not indicate that there was definitely a new observation. It could be based on recalculations from old observations. - Fartherred (talk) 04:40, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

7PM EST on the 7th is 00 hours UT on the 8th which is what the JPL SBDB has been claiming as the best-fit since Feb 25. I have confirmed that there are currently NO new observations of 13TX68 so any claim of a precise time/distance is bogus. Everything is currently based on 2013 orbital data! -- Kheider (talk) 05:32, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for keeping this article grounded in reality, Kheider. Temporary page protection might be necessary if people keep referencing unreliable sources that will/have crop/ped up due to sensationalism of misinformation.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  15:12, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

Thank you Tom. It is frightening how fast bad information propagates via social media in the rush to write a story. This all started with a generic tweet. 13TX68 is a very small asteroid certainly millions of km from Earth by now. There is good possibility it will NOT be recovered during this passage (I give it about a 50/50 chance). Asteroids with poorly constrained orbits that are easily recovered when millions of km from Earth are generally about 10 times larger (200–300 meters in diameter). -- Kheider (talk) 15:18, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

Hopefully all the attention results in another observation. But based on what you said, and on the orbit diagram, and the very rough assumption of similar speeds and thus a constant relative position between us and 2013 TX68 (which is ok to do over a short time, like < 2-4 days (<= 1% of our orbit)), if we haven't already seen it yet, we probably won't.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  17:56, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

With a relative velocity (wrt Earth) of ~15.3 km/s the distance between Earth and 13TX68 can vary by about 1.3 million km per day. 13TX68 is going about 35km/s (wrt the Sun). -- Kheider (talk) 18:44, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

Since at least March 3, the Minor Planet Center has been claiming a nominal closest approach of March 7 13:42, which is perfectly inline with the JPL SBDB uncertainties of ±2 days. Since the asteroid approached from the sunward side we can very confidently state that the MPC nominal solution does NOT currently include recovery images from the 2016 pass. -- Kheider (talk) 11:15, 10 March 2016 (UTC)

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