Asteroid (480820) 1998 VF32 passes the Earth.

Asteroid (480820) 1998 VF32 passed by the Earth at a distance of about 13 504 000 km (35.2 times the average distance between the Earth and the Moon, or 9.03% of the distance between the Earth and the Sun), slightly before 11.00 pm GMT on Friday 20 November 2020. There was no danger of the asteroid hitting us, though were it to do so it would not have presented a significant threat. (480820) 1998 VF32 has an estimated equivalent diameter of 110-360 m (i.e. it is estimated that a spherical object with the same volume would be 110-360 m in diameter), and an object of this size would be predicted to be capable of passing through the Earth's atmosphere relatively intact, impacting the ground directly with an explosion that would be 300-100 000 times as powerful as the Hiroshima bomb. Such an impact would result in an impact crater roughly 1.5-5 km in diameter and devastation on a global scale, as well as climatic effects that would last years or even decades.

 

The closest approach of (480820) 1998 VF32 to the Earth on 20 November 2020. JPL Small Body Database.

(480820) 1998 VF32 was discovered on 14 November 2000 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Lincoln Near Earth Asteroid Research Laboratory in Socorro, New Mexico. The designation 1998 VF32 implies that it was the 806th asteroid (asteroid F32 - in numbering asteroids the letters A-Y, excluding I, are assigned numbers from 1 to 25, with a number added to the end each time the alphabet is ended, so that A = 1, A1 = 25, A2 = 49, etc., which means that F32 = (25 X 32) + 6 = 806) discovered in the second half of November 1998 (period 1998 V),  while the designation 480820 implies that it was 480 820th asteroid ever discovered (asteroids are not given this longer designation immediately to avoid naming double or false sightings).

(480820) 1998 VF32 has a 287 day (0.78) orbital period, with an elliptical orbit tilted at an angle of 23.7° to the plain of the Solar System which takes in to 0.47 AU from the Sun (47% of the distance at which the Earth orbits the Sun, and slightly outside the distance at which Mercury orbits the Sun) and out to 1.23 AU (23% further away from the Sun than the Earth). Although it does cross the Earth's orbit and is briefly further from the Sun on each cycle, (480820) 1998 VF32 spends most of its time closer to the Sun than we are, and is therefore classified as an Aten Group Asteroid. As an asteroid probably larger than 150 m in diameter that occasionally comes within 0.05 AU of the Earth, (480820) 1998 VF32 is also classified as a Potentially Hazardous Asteroid.

 

The orbit and current position of (480820) 1998 VF32. International Astronomical Union/Minor Planet Center.

Close encounters between the asteroid and Earth are fairly common, with the last thought to have happened in November 2016 and the next predicted in July 2022. (480820) 1998 VF32 also has occasional close encounters with the planets Mercury, which it last came close to in November 2003 and is next predicted to pass in November 2021.

See also...

Follow Sciency Thoughts on Facebook.

Follow Sciency Thoughts on Twitter.