Asteroid 2014 MY passed by the Earth at a distance of 10 040 000 km (26.12 times the average distance between the Earth and the Moon), slightly after 11.20 am GMT on Thursday 26 June 2014. There was no danger of the asteroid hitting us, though had it done so it would have presented only a moderate threat. 2014 MP has an estimated equivalent diameter of 23-71 m (i.e. it is estimated that a spherical object with the same volume would be 23-71 m in diameter), and an object of this size would be expected to break up in the atmosphere between 40 and 4 km above the ground, with only fragmentary material reaching the Earth's surface, although being directly beneath an object towards the upper end of this range would probably be fairly unpleasant, as it would be predicted to explode with an energy equivalent to about 15 megatons of TNT (roughly 880 times the energy of the Hiroshima bomb).
The calculated orbit of 2014 MY. JPL Small Body Database Browser.
2014 MY was discovered on 18 June 2014 (eight 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 2014 MY implies that it was the 24th asteroid (asteroid Y) discovered in the second half of June 2014 (period 2014 M).
While 2014 MY occasionally comes near to the Earth, it does not actually cross our orbital path. It has an elliptical 1737 day orbit, that takes it from 1.03 AU from the Sun (1.03 times the distance at which the Earth orbits the Sun), slightly outside our orbit, to 4.63 AU from the Sun, (4.63 times the distance at which the Earth orbits the Sun, slightly more than three times the distance at which the planet Mars orbits the Sun). As a Near Earth Object that remains strictly outside the orbit of the Earth it is classed as an Amor Family Asteroid.
See also...
Asteroid 2014 MY17 passed by the Earth at a distance of about 13 500 000 km (35.14 times the average distance between the Earth and the Moon), at about 3.25 am GMT on Thursday 26 June 2014...
Asteroid 2014 MZ5 passed by the Earth at a distance of about 9 908 000 km (25.78 times the average distance between the Earth and the Moon), slightly after 3.50 pm GMT on Sunday 22 June 2014...
Comet C/2014 E2 (Jacques) will reach its perihelion (the closest point on its orbit to the Sun) on Thursday 3 July 2014, reaching its brightest in the sky (seen from Earth) a later in July, when it should...
Follow Sciency Thoughts on Facebook.
