Sunday 10 May 2020

Asteroid 2020 JA passes the Earth.

Asteroid 2020 JA passed by the Earth at a distance of about 239 100 km (0.62 times the average  distance between the Earth and the Moon, or 0.15% of the distance between the Earth and the Sun), slightly after 8.00 pm GMT on Sunday 3 May 2020. There was no danger of the asteroid hitting us, though were it to do so it would not have presented a significant threat. 2020 JA has an estimated equivalent diameter of 7-21 m (i.e. it is estimated that a spherical object with the same volume would be 7-21 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 37 and 20  km above the ground, with only fragmentary material reaching the Earth's  surface.
 
300 second image of 2020 GN2 taken with the Elena Planetwave 17" Telescope at Ceccano in Italy on 16 April 2020. The asteroid is the small point at the centre of the image, indicated by the white arrow, the longer lines are stars, their elongation being caused by the telescope tracking the asteroid over the length of the exposure. The line across the bottom right section of the image is a satellite that moved across the field of vision during the exposure. Gianluca Masi/Virtual Telescope.

2020 JA was discovered on 1 May 2020 (two days before its closest encounter with the Earth) by the University of Hawaii's PANSTARRS telescope. The designation 2020 JA implies that it was the first asteroid (asteroid A) discovered in the first half of May 2020 (period 2020 J).

The calculated orbit of 2020 JA. The Sky Live 3D Solar System Simulator.

2020 JA has a 2044 day (5.60 year) orbital period, with an elliptical orbit tilted at an angle of 5.89° to the plain of the Solar System which takes in to 0.72 AU from the Sun (72% of the distance at which the Earth orbits the Sun, and slightly outside the orbit of the planet Venus) and out to 5.58 AU (558% of the distance at which the Earth orbits the sun and further from the Sun than the planet Jupiter). 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). 2020 JA also has occassional close encounters with the planet Jupiter, with the next predicted for February 2073.

See also...

https://sciencythoughts.blogspot.com/2020/05/fireball-meteor-over-puget-sound.htmlhttps://sciencythoughts.blogspot.com/2020/05/asteroid-2020-dm4-passes-earth.html
https://sciencythoughts.blogspot.com/2020/05/comet-c2020-h2-pruyne-makes-its-closest.htmlhttps://sciencythoughts.blogspot.com/2020/05/the-eta-aquarid-meteor-shower.html
https://sciencythoughts.blogspot.com/2020/05/asteroid-2020-fm6-passes-earth.htmlhttps://sciencythoughts.blogspot.com/2020/05/comet-c2017-t2-panstarrs-reaches.html
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