Friday 6 July 2018

Asteroid 2018 NH passes the Earth.

Asteroid 2018 NH passed by the Earth at a distance of about 433 500 km (1.12 times the average  distance between the Earth and the Moon, or 0.29% of the distance between the Earth and the Sun), at about 5.20 pm GMT on Monday 2 July 2018. There was no danger of the asteroid hitting us, though were it to do so it would not have presented a significant threat. 2018 NH has an estimated equivalent diameter of 22-68 m (i.e. it is estimated that a spherical object with the same volume would be 22-68 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 20 and 4 km above the ground, with only fragmentary material reaching the Earth's surface.

The calculated orbit of 2018 NH. Minor Planet Center.

2018 NH was discovered on 4 July 2018 (two days 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 2018 NH implies that the asteroid was the eighth object (object H) discovered in the first half of July 2018 (period 2018 N). 

2018 NH has an 948 day orbital period and an eccentric orbit tilted at an angle of 35.6° to the plane of the Solar System, which takes it from 0.91 AU from the Sun (i.e. 91% of he average distance at which the Earth orbits the Sun) to 2.87 AU from the Sun (i.e. 287% of the average distance at which the Earth orbits the Sun, and almost twice as far from the Sun as 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). 

See also...

http://sciencythoughts.blogspot.com/2018/07/asteroid-2018-mg7-passes-earth.htmlhttps://sciencythoughts.blogspot.com/2018/06/fireball-over-southern-russia.html
https://sciencythoughts.blogspot.com/2018/06/asteroid-2017-ye5-passes-earth.htmlhttp://sciencythoughts.blogspot.com/2018/06/comet-c2016-m1-panstarrs-makes-its.html
http://sciencythoughts.blogspot.com/2018/06/asteroid-2018-ld1-passes-earth.htmlhttp://sciencythoughts.blogspot.com/2018/06/fireball-meteor-over-belgium.html
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