'Rare species' of asteroid spotted in our solar system
The Zwicky Transient Facility, known as ZTF, was installed on the Samuel Oschin Telescope at the California Institute of Technology's Palomar Observatory in March. Since then, it has observed over a thousand supernovae outside our galaxy, extreme cosmic events and more than a billion Milky Way stars.
[...] ZTF is also pretty good at spotting near-Earth asteroids that zoom past our planet. [...] But this asteroid, known as 2019 AQ3, isn't like anything they've seen before. Quanzhi Ye, a postdoctoral scholar at the California Institute of Technology's data and science center for astronomy, spotted the images of the asteroid on January 4.
"This is one of the largest asteroids with an orbit entirely within the orbit of Earth -- a very rare species," Ye said.
Ye reported it to the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center, which officially categorizes asteroids and other objects in our solar system. His data, along with that of other telescopes around the world, helped determine the orbit that 2019 AQ3 takes around the sun.The asteroid is one of the first to be found that remains within Venus' orbit. It has a vertically angled orbit that takes it in a loop up and over the space where the planets orbit the sun. It has the shortest year of any known asteroid, completing its orbit every 165 days. It's also estimated to be fairly large, about a mile across. But researchers don't know the true size just yet, due to the limited data.
2019 AQ3 has a diameter estimated at 1.4 km, a perihelion of 0.4036 AU, and an aphelion of 0.7737 AU.
Mercury orbits the Sun between 0.3075 AU and 0.4667 AU, and Venus orbits the Sun between 0.7184 AU and 0.7282 AU.
Minor Planet Center. Also at Caltech and ScienceAlert.
Related Stories
The Zwicky Transient Facility has done it again:
A massive asteroid has eluded astronomers because of its unusual orbit -- until now. Astronomers have spotted 2019 LF6, which is about a kilometer wide and boasts the shortest "year" of any known asteroid, circling the sun about every 151 days, according to the California Institute of Technology.
This rare rocky body is one of only 20 known Atira asteroids, those whose orbits fall entirely within that of the Earth. "You don't find kilometer-size asteroids very often these days," said Quanzhi Ye, a postdoctoral scholar at Caltech who discovered 2019 LF6 via the Zwicky Transient Facility, a camera at the school's Palomar Observatory that scans the sky for objects. "Thirty years ago, people started organizing methodical asteroid searches, finding larger objects first, but now that most of them have been found, the bigger ones are rare birds."
Venus completes one orbit around the Sun in just under 225 days. Maybe we'll find a "large" asteroid confined entirely within Mercury's ~88-day orbit some day.
2019 LF6 (151 day orbital period, 0.3167 AU perihelion, 0.7938 AU aphelion, ~1 km diameter).
2019 AQ3 (165 day orbital period, 0.4036 AU perihelion, 0.7737 AU aphelion, ~1.4 km diameter).
Previously: Newly Discovered Asteroid Orbits Between Mercury and Venus, With Shortest Year of Any Known Asteroid
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 10 2019, @09:29PM (6 children)
It's a piece of dust on the lens. Don't get too excited until they have confirmation from a less biased source.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 10 2019, @09:49PM (5 children)
It is an alien craft. It is possibly dating to the time of the pyramids and/or that weird thing they discovered in the 1950s in polar orbit around the earth (forgot the name of it).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 10 2019, @10:47PM (2 children)
It's NCC-1701 stuck in a time warp.
(Score: 2) by RandomFactor on Sunday February 10 2019, @11:57PM (1 child)
Why would the Enterprise transmit '6EQUJ5' ?
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 11 2019, @12:13AM
The Signal was a trial TEST on reciprocal sagacity of earthlings, and its results – on the ready for Contact.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 10 2019, @11:38PM (1 child)
Santa Claus' sleigh?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 11 2019, @01:19AM
It was the black knight satellite: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Knight_satellite_conspiracy_theory [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 10 2019, @11:29PM (1 child)
If I read tfs correctly, it crosses the orbits of Mercury and Venus. What are chances it could hit one of them?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 11 2019, @01:04AM
Given it's orbit is in a different plane to the planets i.e. it's vertical, the chance of collision is probably far far less than if it were in the same plane. It probably doesn't even cross either planet's orbit due to the inclination of it's own orbit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 10 2019, @11:41PM (1 child)
Pretty soon they're going to be making all our astronomical discoveries, and we're going to be washing their laundry.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 11 2019, @12:19AM
They've been making all the medical discoveries recently too. Not kidding that I quit due to it being overrun BS a few years ago (surely I am not alone in reading the signs) and ever since it is over 80% Chinese authors on that specific topic. Just when you thought it couldn't continue...
(Score: 2) by Muad'Dave on Monday February 11 2019, @12:46PM
This asteroid sounds like a great target to test landers and sample return missions. It's close enough to not require years of travel, and its orbit would grant us a view from outside the ecliptic plane.