Asteroid
2016 RO17 passed by the Earth at a distance of 882 200 km (2.30 times
the average distance between the Earth and the Moon, 0.6% of
the average distance between the Earth and the Sun), slightly before 2.30 am GMT on Thursday 8 September 2016. There
was no
danger
of the asteroid
hitting us, though had it done so it would have presented no
threat. 2016 RO17 has an estimated equivalent diameter of 10-33
m (i.e.
it is estimated that a spherical object with the same volume would be
10-33 m in diameter), and an object of this size would be expected to
explode in an airburst (an explosion caused by superheating from
friction with the Earth's atmosphere, which is greater than that caused
by simply falling, due to the orbital momentum of the asteroid) in the
atmosphere between 32 and 12 km above the ground, with only fragmentary
material reaching the Earth's surface.
The calculated orbit of 2016 RO17. JPL Small Body Database.
2016 RO17 was discovered on 5 September 2016 (three days before its closest approach to the Earth) by the University of Arizona's Mt. Lemmon Survey at the Steward Observatory on
Mount Lemmon in the Catalina Mountains north of Tucson. The designation
2016 RO17 implies that the asteroid was the 439th object (object O17)
discovered in the first half of September 2016 (period 2016 R).
2016 RO17 has a 1072 day orbital period and an elliptical orbit tilted at
an angle of 6.61° to the plain of the Solar System
that
takes it from 0.76 AU from the Sun (i.e. 76% of the average distance at
which the Earth orbits the Sun and slightly outside the orbit of Venus)
to 3.34 AU from the Sun (i.e. 334% of
the average distance at which the Earth orbits the Sun, considerably
more than twice the distance at which the planet Mars orbits the Sun).
It is therefore classed as an
Apollo
Group Asteroid (an asteroid that is on average further from the Sun than
the Earth, but which does get closer). This means that close
encounters between the asteroid and Earth are very common, with the
last thought to have happened in January 2011 and the next predicted in August 2019.
See also...
Fireball over North Carolina. The American Meteor Society has
received reports of a bright fireball meteor being seen over parts of
the southeast of North America slightly after 6.00 pm local time
(slightly after 11.00 pm GMT) on Thursday 8
September 2016.
The fireball was seen across most...
Asteroid 2016 RB1 passes the Earth. Asteroid
2016 RB1 passed by the Earth at a distance of 40 470 km (0.11 times
the average distance between the Earth and the Moon, 0.02% of
the average distance between the Earth and the Sun, or 4684 m higher
than the orbit in which communication satellites in geostationary orbits
orbit
the Earth)...
Fireball over Oregon. The American Meteor Society has
received reports of a bright fireball meteor being seen over much of
the northwest of North America at about 11.55 pm local time on Friday 2
September 2016 (about 6.55 am on Saturday 3 September GMT).
The fireball was...
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