Tuesday 30 June 2020

Asteroid (441987) 2010 NY65 passes the Earth.

Asteroid (441987) 2010 NY65 passed by the Earth at a distance of about 3 758 000 km (9.79 times the average distance between the Earth and the Moon, or 2.51% of the distance between the Earth and the Sun), slightly before 6.45 am GMT on Wednesday 24 June 2020. There was no danger of the asteroid hitting us, though were it to do so it would have presented a considerable threat. (441987) 2010 NY65 has an estimated equivalent diameter of 99-310 m (i.e. it is estimated that a spherical object with the same volume would be 99-310 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 200-7500 times as powerful as the Hiroshima bomb. Such an impact would result in an impact crater roughly 1-4.8 km in diameter and devastation on a global scale, as well as climatic effects that would last years or even decades.

Timelapse made from 411 images of (441987) 2010 NY65 made on 1 July 2016. Asteroid Tracker/Las Cumbres Observatory Network.

(441987) 2010 NY65 was discovered on 14 July 2014 by the  Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer satellite.  The designation 2010 NY65 implies that the asteroid was the 1584th object (object Y65 - in numbering asteroids the letters A-Z, excluding I, are assigned numbers from 1 to 24, 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 Y65 = (24 x 65) + 24 = 1584) discovered in the first half of Ju;y 2010 (period 2010 N), while the designation 441987 implies that it was 441 987th asteroid ever discovered (asteroids are not given this longer designation immediately to avoid naming double or false sightings).

The calculated orbit of (441987) 2010 NY65. Asteroid Radar Research/JPL/NASA.

(441987) 2010 NY65 has a 366 day (1 year) orbital period, with an elliptical orbit tilted at an angle of 11.6° to the plain of the Solar System which takes in to 0.63 AU from the Sun (63% of the distance at which the Earth orbits the Sun, and slightly inside the orbit of the planet Venus) and out to 1.37 AU (137% of the distance at which the Earth orbits the Sun). This means that close encounters between the asteroid and Earth are fairly common, with the last thought to have happened in June 2019 and the next predicted in June 2021. 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). As an asteroid probably larger than 150 m in diameter that occasionally comes within 0.05 AU of the Earth,(441987) 2010 NY65 is also classified as a Potentially Hazardous Asteroid. (441987) 2010 NY65 also has occasional close encounters with the planets Venus, which it last came close to in May this year (2020) and is next predicted to pass in May 2053.

See also...

https://sciencythoughts.blogspot.com/2020/06/asteroid-2017-xl2-passes-earth.htmlhttps://sciencythoughts.blogspot.com/2020/06/the-june-bootid-meteor-shower.html
https://sciencythoughts.blogspot.com/2020/06/comet-c2019-u6-lemmon-reaches-perihelion.htmlhttps://sciencythoughts.blogspot.com/2020/06/asteroid-2020-ju-passes-earth.html
https://sciencythoughts.blogspot.com/2020/06/fireball-meteor-over-western-australia.htmlhttps://sciencythoughts.blogspot.com/2020/06/comet-c2019-k7-smith-reaches-perihelion.html
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