Friday the 13th Near Earth Objects
A good day to keep an eye on the sky
The Widget displays the next five Earth approaches to within 4.6 million miles (7.5 million kilometers or 19.5 times the distance to the moon); an object larger than about 150 meters that can approach the Earth to within this distance is termed a potentially hazardous object. ~ https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/asteroidwatch/
Average distance between Earth and the moon is about 239,000 miles (385,000 kilometers).
Today we have not 1, but 4 objects classified as Near Earth Objects passing by today.
- 2017 TT1 at 0.00647 AU
- 2017 TK2 at 0.01267 AU
- 2017 TU1 at 0.01339 AU
- 2005 TE49 at 0.02178 AU
and one doing a fly by tomorrow - 2017 TV1 at 0.01436 AU
While none of them will even come close to hitting Earth, the significance I see is that of these 5, 4 of them began being tracked in 2017. That's what the number signifies, the year when it started being tracked. The first one comes the closet at twice the distance of Luna. And while it is only 44 ft across, it would make for a nice light show if it did enter Earth's atmosphere.
Later this month, we have 2 much larger asteroids (about 10 to 20 times larger) doing a flyby.
1 ) 171576 (1999 VP11) on Oct. 22 at 0.03847 AU
2 ) 2003 UV11 on Oct. 31 at 0.03847 AU
Luckily, these two will be even further out than the first five.
According to NASA JPL's NEO tracker, there are only three other newly founded objects this month and those are all on Oct. 20th. And these three are twice as big as the five flying by in the next 24 hours. However, they won't be any closer than the two bigger ones at the end of the month.
Now, I don't keep a close eye on Near Earth Objects But, if I were to see three new NEOs appearing on the same day and then three more new NEOs seven days later, I would begin to wonder if there was a pattern starting. I would begin to wonder if something happened in the Oort Cloud that might be sending out waves of objects towards the Sun.
Or, just maybe, Planet X isn't hypothetical anymore and NASA has found it and it is causing a disruption.
Anyway, the world won't end from an asteroid today or tomorrow. It most likely won't end from an asteroid next week or on Halloween. But, it would probably be good to keep an eye on things in the sky.
Man I wonder how they track these objects since 2003?
It's not like they can just put a gps tracker on them and be done with it.
Third times a charm.
They used telescopes. They have been tracking the much larger ones since as early as 1981.
Yeah but how do you track them with telescopes?
Same way they track the planets.
They determine how big it is, how fast it is going and where it is going and make calculations to determine where it should be when they look for it again.
Here's an article, saying what I assumed.
https://www.space.com/19770-scientist-track-near-earth-asteroid.html
Nice for Friday the 13th... spooky.