Asteroid 2017 YQ6 passed by the Earth at a distance of about 724 700
km (1.88 times the average distance between the Earth and the Moon, or
0.48% of the distance between the Earth and the Sun), slightly after 2.20 am
GMT on Wednesday 27 December 2017. There was no danger of
the asteroid hitting us, though were it to do so it would not have
presented a significant threat. 2017 YQ6 has an estimated
equivalent
diameter of 4-15 m (i.e. it is estimated that a spherical object
with
the same volume would be 4-15 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 43 and 26 km above the ground, with only fragmentary material
reaching the Earth's surface.
The calculated orbit of 2017 YQ6. Minor Planet Center.
2017 YQ6 was discovered on 26 December 2017 (the day after 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 2017 YQ6
implies that the asteroid was the 166th object (object Q6) discovered in the second half of December 2017 (period 2017 Y).
2017
YQ6 has a 921 day orbital period and an eccentric orbit
tilted at an angle of 6.19° to the plane of the Solar System, which
takes it from 0.86 AU from the Sun (i.e. 86% of he average distance at
which the Earth orbits the Sun) to 2.85 AU from the Sun (i.e. 285% of
the
average distance at which the Earth orbits the Sun, and considerably
more distant from the Sun than the planet Mars). 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 the
asteroid has occasional close encounters with the Earth, with the
next predicted
in January 2079.
See also...
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