I may also take some wide-field piggyback stills with the DSLR, but mostly, this one will just be fun to watch. The asteroid will pass through the constellations Aquila, Delphinus, and Pegasus as it heads westward.
Interestingly, YU55 passes within a degree of Altair centered on PM EST only 27 minutes after local sunset, and also makes a very close pass of the star Epsilon Delphini during closest approach. On an approach as close as this one, two factors muddle the precise prediction coordinates of the asteroid; one is the fact the gravitational field of the Earth will change the orbit of YU55 slightly, and two is that the position will change due to the position of the observer on the Earth and the effect of parallactic shift.
Many prediction programs assume the Earthly vantage as a mere point in space, fine for positioning deep sky objects but not so hot for ones passing near the planet. A good place to get updated coordinates is JPL Horizons website which lets you generate an accurate ephemeris for your exact longitude latitude and elevation. Excellent information… many thanks to David for sharing with us!
You can read the full article on his website here. And if you do witness the pass of this asteroid and somehow manage to get some photos of it, you can share them on the Universe Today Flickr group … they may be featured in an upcoming article!
Please fix or preferably remove this widget. I agree. This is extremely annoying. If it would actually remember my preference for it to leave me the hell alone while I read the article, I could live with it.
Finally, amateur astronomers equipped to do accurate photometry are being sought to help observe the object. Un saluto a tutti voi, da Antonio. How can such a small body, has a nearly round shape? It seems to me, a strange … And then, I would like to know if there is any possibility to study this small asteroid, by some scientific satellite, as well as observers from the ground. Greetings to all of you, Antonio. But it can be the case by way erosion. The shape distribution of asteroid families: Evidence for evolution driven by small impacts Gyula M.
From the abstract: A statistical analysis of brightness variability of asteroids reveals how their shapes evolve from elongated to rough spheroidal forms, presumably driven by impact-related phenomena. Based on the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Moving Object Catalog, we determined the shape distribution of 11, asteroids, with special emphasis on eight prominent asteroid families.
In young families, asteroids have a wide range of shape elongations, implying fragmentation—formation. In older families we see an increasing number of rough spheroids, in agreement with the predictions of an impact-driven evolution. Old families also contain a group of moderately elongated members, which we suggest correspond to higher-density, more impact-resistant cores of former fragmented asteroids that have undergone slow shape erosion.
Billons of years ago, when the solar system was new and full of debris, asteroids like it probably crashed into the young Earth almost routinely, carrying organic, carbon-based materials, and making life possible. Scientists would like to probe its chemical makeup, at least remotely. The factor that has put YU55 on the public's radar is that it is at least 1, feet wide -- larger than an aircraft carrier, according to radar measurements.
The last time an asteroid this big passed by was in , and the next one scientists know of won't be until , NASA says. There have been some rude surprises in between, but they didn't anything remotely as large.
It is moving at about 29, mph relative to Earth's surface. Asteroids often pass this close, but most are tiny. But an impact in modern times could be catastrophic. There have been a few times -- most notably 65 million years ago, at the end of the age of dinosaurs -- when impacts from space wiped out much of the life on Earth. Ray Williamson, head of an organization called the Secure World Foundation, said he hopes YU55 will serve as a healthy alert that the nations of the world need to get together and decide what to do if some future asteroid appears to be coming too close for comfort.
All sorts of schemes have been proposed for deflecting asteroids -- everything from blowing them apart with nuclear weapons to deflecting them gently with advanced rocket engines. But since the chances of a major hit anytime soon are so low, no plan has funding or international backing. Williamson says it's worth at least making plans.
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