Next Tuesday Nov. 8th at midnight GMT is a big day (or night) for space enthusiasts. The famous asteroid Yu55 takes its walk down the runway, as depicted here: http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/images/2005_YU55_approach_movie.gif.

It will reach a visual brightness of 11th magnitude and should be easily visible. Using the Goldstone radar operating in a relatively new "chirp" mode could produce a shape model reconstruction with a resolution of as fine as 4 meters.Still trying to get the hang of this. Sorry about the premature withdrawal (we are working on new drugs for that).

To continue with the two other members of the Trinity, Comet Elenin was first 'detected' on Dec. 10, 2010 (i.e. 10/12/10 European-style dating) by Leonid Elenin in Russia. Elenin is described by Don Yeomans of NASA's NEO as being a 'wimpy' modest-sized icy dirtball and will require a good pair of binoculars, clear skies, and a dark, secluded location to see it. "Comet Elenin will not encounter any dark bodies that could perturb its orbit, nor will it influence us in any way here on Earth," said Yeomans. "It will get no closer to Earth than 22 million miles." However, he adds on the NASA website http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-135 "This intrepid little traveler will offer astronomers a chance to study a relatively young comet that came here from well beyond our solar system's planetary region. After a short while, it will be headed back out again, and we will not see or hear from Elenin for thousands of years. That's pretty cool."

Finally, for those of us entertained by Pseudoscience, I offer up the relationship between Elenin and Nibiru. At http://elenin.org/, the Anonymous Author speculates that Elenin is actually a "cover for the real deal: an old brown dwarf sister Sun with 3 moons that is on a 3,600 year orbit around the galaxy. It has been referred to as Nibiru by some, and NASA’s seeming reluctance to dispel the notion has only served to increase speculation of an imminent Extinction Level Event sometime soon (perhaps 12/12/12 at 12 noon UT).

The Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nibiru_collision describes Nibiru, AKA 'Planet X', as the Earth's evil antagonist, as advocated by Nancy Lieder, founder of the website ZetaTalk. Lieder says she has the ability to communicate with extra-terrestrials from the Zeta Reticuli star system through an implant in her brain.