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
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'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.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Thursday July 18 2019, @05:54PM (4 children)
You know we are the target, right?
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 4, Insightful) by ikanreed on Thursday July 18 2019, @07:11PM (3 children)
I'm not really feeling threatened by an asteroid that has an apoapsis below our periapsis, tbh.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday July 18 2019, @08:20PM (2 children)
Am I correct in thinking that the Sun is more likely to capture something like that, than the Earth? Maybe I should have a go at Kerbal Space Program.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Thursday July 18 2019, @08:42PM (1 child)
I can't say you're technically correct because "capture" refers to entering an orbit of the sun from an what had been an escape trajectory meaning it's already captured.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday July 18 2019, @09:42PM
Yes, that sounds correct, Neptune has captured a dwarf planet, which is now the moon Triton.
I was thinking of a rock actually hitting the Sun which I suppose goes a little bit past "capture".
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Thursday July 18 2019, @09:15PM
https://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-news/telescopes-sweep-up-near-earth-asteroids/ [skyandtelescope.com]
When LSST starts operating, the results are going to be incredible.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Friday July 19 2019, @09:28AM (1 child)
Perhaps one day it will be hollowed out and set spinning, and a city built inside to serve trade and transport between the habitats of Venus and Mercury.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday July 19 2019, @07:08PM
If it is tidally locked (I have no idea if it is), maybe it could be used to hold some telescopes, with the rock acting as a heat shield.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]