* Astronomy

Blobrana · L

Asteroid (419624) 2010 SO16

Blobrana · L

RE: Asteroid 2010 SO16

Blobrana · L

The 210 - 460 metre wide asteroid 2010 SO16 will make a close pass (59.8 lunar distances, 0.1537 AU), travelling at 9.75 km/second, to the Earth-Moon system on the 14th May, 2013 @ 15:46 UT ±00:01.

The Lunar Distance (LD), the distance between Earth and the Moon, equals 384,401 km, (or 0.00256 AU).

Blobrana · L

The 200 - 460 metre wide asteroid 2010 SO16 made a close pass (55.4 lunar distances, 0.1423 AU), travelling at 9.53 km/second, to the Earth-Moon system on the 13th May, 2012 @ 13:22 UT ±00:01.

The Lunar Distance (LD), the distance between Earth and the Moon, equals 384,401 km, (or 0.00256 AU).

Blobrana · L

2010 SO16 is the provisional designation for near earth asteroid discovered by the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer space telescope. The orbit was described by Christou Apostolos and David Asher at the Armagh Observatory in Ireland. The object has a magnitude of 20.7 and is several hundred meters in diameter.
Read more

Blobrana · L

Astronomers Find Newly Discovered Asteroid is Earth's Companion

Astronomers from the Armagh Observatory in Northern Ireland have found that a recently discovered asteroid has been following the Earth in its motion around the Sun for at least the past 250,000 years, and may be intimately related to the origin of our planet. Their work appears in a paper in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
The asteroid first caught the eye of the scientists, Apostolos "Tolis" Christou and David Asher, two months after it was found by the WISE infrared survey satellite, launched in 2009 by the United States.
Read more

Blobrana · L

WISE Mission Spots 'Horseshoe' Asteroid

An asteroid recently discovered by NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) may be a bit of an oddball. Most near-Earth asteroids -- NEAs for short -- have eccentric, or egg-shaped, orbits that take the asteroids right through the inner solar system. The new object, designated 2010 SO16, is different. Its orbit is almost circular such that it cannot come close to any other planet in the solar system except Earth.
However, even though the asteroid rides around with Earth, it never gets that close.
Read more

Blobrana · L

Earth finds new companion as giant asteroid joins its path around the sun

Earth has found a new companion that has joined its orbit around the sun, scientists have revealed.
It may not have the most romantic of names, but Asteroid 2010 SO16 could pursue Earth for anywhere between the next 120,000 to a million years.
And at a few hundred metres across, it is the largest space rock ever discovered so close to earth.
Read more

Blobrana · L

Newly discovered asteroid could be Earth's companion

Astronomers from the Armagh Observatory in Northern Ireland have found that a recently discovered asteroid may be intimately related to the origin of our planet.
They found that the asteroid, discovered by the WISE infrared survey satellite launched in 2009 by the United States, has been following the Earth in its motion around the Sun for at least the past 250,000 years.
Read more

Blobrana · L

Title: A long-lived horseshoe companion to the Earth
Authors: A. A. Christou, D. J. Asher

Full paper in PDF format