Astroblog: 1998 QE2 in Celestia

Saturday, June 01, 2013

1998 QE2 in Celestia


Orbit of 1998 QE2 simulated in Celestia at closest approach on May 31 20:59 UT (click to embiggen)	1998 QE2 simulated in Celestia at closest approach on May 31, it looks more dramatic in the illustrations to various news stories, but they are all artistic versions that exaggerate the size of Earth. (click to embiggen)

If like I am, you are clouded out of your view of Near Earth Asteroid 285263 1998 QE2 then why not try a Celestia simulation? You could also go to astroweb TV to see the live webcast of the flyby at the Virtual Telescope at 31 May, starting at 20:30 UT (that's 6:30 am AEST).

For Celestia, copy the section below to a file names 1998QE2.ssc and place it in the extras folder.
===========1998QE2.ssc=======================
"1998 QE2" "Sol"
{
    Class "asteroid"
    Mesh   "ky26.cmod"
    Texture "asteroid.jpg"
    Radius 1.35 # maximum semi-axis
    MeshCenter [ -0.000718 -0.000099 0.000556 ]

    #InfoURL "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%28285263%29_1998_QE2"

    EllipticalOrbit
    {
    Epoch             2456432.586820592895 #(2013-May-20.08682059)
    Period            3.77
    SemiMajorAxis     2.421509211736214
    Eccentricity      0.5710446435571564
    Inclination       12.854229843842
    AscendingNode    250.1715449355728
    ArgOfPericenter 345.61224799
        MeanAnomaly      351.607302468126
    }

    RotationPeriod 0.4

    Albedo 0.15

}
===================================================

Labels: asteroids, celestia, NEO