Thursday, May 23, 2019

Asteroid flyby, with a twist


This weekend (May 25), an asteroid named KW1994 will fly by Earth.  This isn't a super close encounter - it's going to be a little over 3 million miles away.  But this is a bigger asteroid, too, about a mile wide, considerably larger than the bus-size rocks that have buzzed by inside the orbit of the Moon.

The twist with this one is that it's actually two;  the asteroid has an asteroid moon, about 0.3 miles across.

Click here to read the EarthSky article, which includes observing instructions if you are so inclined.  I imagine that if anyone is so inclined, they've already figured out how to observe objects.

Ever since the Galileo spacecraft passed by asteroid Ida on its way to Jupiter, and discovered that it had a cute little moonlet orbiting around it, subsequently named Dactyl, I've been intrigued by asteroids that have orbiting subsidiaries.

Ida and Dactyl (shown in correct relative scale):



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