| A seemingly small but tremendous discovery was | | | | far away planet, think what they would cause on |
| made on the night of March 24, 1993. That average | | | | earth! |
| night, a photograph of the stars was taken by the 0.4 | | | | Near earth objects are not animals of Star wars like |
| meter telescope on Palomar Mt. in California. Eugene | | | | Acklay, Massiff, Iriazes, Sarlacc, Orbalisk or Vine |
| and Carolyn Shoemaker and David Levy studied that | | | | snakes. But rather, NEA's are asteroids, comets and |
| photograph of the stars and found an unknown comet. | | | | meteoroids that have orbits close enough to |
| That comet caused a huge impact. | | | | theoretically crash into earth. |
| In July 1992 that comet fractured into pieces. The | | | | This type of collision is not new. In fact on earth, there |
| largest portions were all large enough to create a huge | | | | are many craters that prove that collisions have |
| impact. | | | | happened. Consider these: Amguid Crater in Algeria |
| Photos by the McDonald Observatory in Texas | | | | which is 0.45 km wide; Flynn Creek crater in |
| showed that the comet was not orbiting the sun. This | | | | Tennessee which is 3.8 km wide; Haviland crater in |
| unusual comet was actually orbiting Jupiter. Even more | | | | Kansas which is 0.015 km wide; Logancha crater in |
| unusual, this comet was destined to crash into the | | | | Russia which is 20 km wide; Goyder crater in Northern |
| planet. | | | | Territory which is 3 km wide. |
| Crowds watched in expectation over the internet | | | | Over 200 asteroids like Icarusand 1998 XM4 have |
| during the third week of July 1994 as the pictures | | | | been discovered which could hit earth. Any one of |
| came in. The sight was even more impressive than | | | | these could cause massive destruction. |
| anyone ever could have imagined. | | | | Today, NASA has an ongoing and escalating program |
| Those huge impacts impelled huge exploration for | | | | to try to discover and track every object that could |
| Near Earth Objects (NEA's). After all, if such | | | | potentially cause any severe damage to earth. |
| impressive collisions could cause such a comotion on a | | | | |