In case you are keeping track:
Asteroid warning: Astronomers find asteroids thought harmless can strike Earth | Science | News |
The Earth is also visited almost every single day by so-called near-Earth objects (NEOs) on “close approach” flybys.
Although a close approach can still be tens of thousands or millions of miles away, the frequency of the visits keeps astronomers and space agencies like NASA on their toes.
Three astronomers at Leiden University in the Netherlands have now discovered many of the asteroids safely orbiting Earth today, can still hit the planet in the future.
Study reveals details of "golf ball asteroid" | MIT News
Two views of the asteroid Pallas, which researchers have determined to be the most heavily cratered object in the asteroid belt.
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Asteroids come in all shapes and sizes, and now astronomers at MIT and elsewhere have observed an asteroid so heavily cratered that they are dubbing it the "golf ball asteroid."
The asteroid is named Pallas, after the Greek goddess of wisdom, and was originally discovered in 1802. Pallas is the third largest object in the asteroid belt, and is about one-seventh the size of the moon. For centuries, astronomers have noticed that the asteroid orbits along a significantly tilted track compared with the majority of objects in the asteroid belt, though the reason for its incline remains a mystery.
Asteroid alert: The Sun will OBLITERATE the asteroid belt - study | Science | News | Express.co.uk
The asteroid belt is the vast region between Mars and Jupiter which contains millions of space rocks which orbit the Sun.
Something known as the Yarkovsky-O’Keefe-Radzievskii-Paddack (YORP) effect sees small celestial bodies, such as asteroids, change their rotation when the heat of a star changes.
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The light from the Sun will be absorbed by the asteroids, which then generates a thrust in the space rocks, according to the research published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
Quite a lot has been going on:
Asteroid alert: NASA spots a 21,100MPH space rock heading towards Earth - Will it hit?
At this rate, the asteroid will narrow the gap between itself and our planet by 1.19am GMT tomorrow (8.19pm EST tonight).
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The asteroid was confirmed in the solar system on February 1, and as of Monday, NASA has traced its orbit 35 times.
NASA said: “Since their orbital paths often cross that of the Earth, collisions with near-Earth objects have occurred in the past and we should remain alert to the possibility of future close Earth approaches.
Adorable asteroid 2020 CW makes one of the closest passes by Earth ever seen - CNET
A speeding space rock made a daring flight above our heads when the adorably appliance-size asteroid 2020 CW whipped by the planet Saturday.
At only about 3.3 feet (a meter) in diameter, the asteroid is roughly the size of an oven, washer or other household appliance. Had it hit Earth, it would most likely have burned up in our atmosphere, but instead it flew by at a blazing 47,647 mph (76,680 km/h) and a distance of 10,225 miles (16,455 kilometers).
Potentially hazardous asteroid spotted passing Earth with its own tiny moon - CNET
Radar images from the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico showed that asteroid 2020 BX12 is actually a binary system. In other words, the big space rock is carrying around a smaller asteroid 70 meters (230 feet) in diameter that orbits it like a tiny moon.
With a diameter of up to 450 meters (1,476 feet) according to NASA data , the larger of the two asteroids qualifies the system to fit the definition of a potentially hazardous asteroid, which is based solely on its size and vicinity to Earth. It does not, however, mean that 2020 BX12 actually presents a potential hazard to humans anytime soon. In fact, it already passed by us on Feb. 3 at a distance more than 11 times as far as the moon is from the Earth.
The Most Cratered Object in the Asteroid Belt Looks Like a Golf Ball | Smart News |
Boasting a width of about 318 miles—about 15 percent of the moon’s diameter—Pallas makes up a whopping 7 percent of the total mass of the asteroid belt. Researchers have known about this absolute cosmic unit, which whirls around the sun with a tiny entourage of smaller objects, for more than two centuries. But in spite of its size, the asteroid has proved difficult to study.
Now, with the help of the SPHERE instrument at the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile, a team of researchers has homed in on some of the beauty marks speckling the asteroid’s surface. Their findings, described in a study published this week in Nature Astronomy , reveal Pallas as the most cratered object in the asteroid belt—a title it’s almost certainly earned by bashing into some of its neighbors.
Happening on Twitter
A massive asteroid is expected to swing past Earth early Saturday morning. https://t.co/j4skMzjd48 fox5sandiego (from San Diego, CA) Sat Feb 15 04:35:33 +0000 2020
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