earth-grazing

Example Sentences

• "A computer program especially suited to the simulation of Earth-grazing meteors has been listed and described in the Astronomical Computing department of Sky & Telescope. The program allows for the curvature of the Earth; it is therefore possible to follow an Earth-grazing meteor as it descends, reaches perigee, and then ascends back into space."
• "Data on an Earth-grazing fireball photographed in 1990 October were published by Borovička and Ceplecha (1992). The U.S. daylight Earth-grazing fireball from 1972 is continuously referred to with much greater mass than the observations indicate (Z. Ceplecha 1993, submitted to Astron. Astrophys.)."
• "How many [orbital periods] are there in a year for an Earth-grazing satellite? Since the time of Sputnik (October 4, 1957), it has been familiar that a satellite in a low orbit revolves about the Earth in about 90 minutes. That period would be 84 minutes for the hypothetical Earth-grazing satellite."
• "The closest previous sighting of an Earth-grazing asteroid was in March of 1989. It was 330 feet in diameter and passed at 10 times the distance to the moon."
• "The ‘Earth grazing’ asteroid Hermes was photographically discovered by [Karl Wilhelm] Reinmuth on October 28th 1937. It came to within nearly 500 000 miles (800 000 km) of the Earth which is less than double the distance that separates the Earth from the moon. On October 30th 1937 Hermes, which was of the 8th magnitude, sped path the Earth at an angular pace in the sky of 5° per hour, so fast that its distance could not be deduced by using the usual mathematical methods. Instead it had to be calculated from its parallax as seen from two different observatories. It was ‘lost’ in 1937."