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What are NEO’s ?
The earth’s orbit around the Sun is in the region of the Solar System with a large number of objects whose orbits pass very near the Earth and can impact with the Earth causing great consequences connected with life on earth . These objects are called NEO’s (Near Earth Objects). NEO’s can be asteroids or comets with orbits near the Earth’s orbit.
By observing NEO’s discovered so far and the Moon's craters it was calculated that the population of NEO’s around the Earth could be shown by exponential growth of the number of objects moving towards smaller and smaller objects. From this observation it can be concluded that the danger of impact of NEO’s with the Earth decreases by increasing the size and mass of the NEO’s.
The biggest risk is the bodies, which are big enough to change the Earth’s climate by forcing large quatities of dust into the stratosphere with their impact. Such a phenomenon could reduce the global temperature of the Earth and cause great losses of food and most likely a collapse of mankind. Various calculations have shown that the minimal mass necessary to provoke such consequences is several tens of billion of tons which would cause an explosion on the Earth having the power of a million megatons of TNT. The diameter of this body would be 1 to 2 kilometres.The possibility of impact with a NEO object bigger than 1 km in diameter is 1:1000.
The first step in any program dealing with the prevention of catastrophic impacts of NEO objects on the Earth should be a detailed search for NEO’s and the analysis of their orbits. The Visnjan Observatory is part of such a program.
