Posted on 02/15/2022 9:37:40 AM PST by Red Badger
On Tuesday, February 22, Asteroid (455176) 1999 VF22 will fly past Earth at around 2:54 am EST.
This object is classified as "potentially hazardous" as it gets near our planet and is fairly large, but next week's flyby is perfectly safe. The space rock won’t get closer than 5,366,000 kilometers (3,334,000 miles) – that’s almost 14 times the distance between the Earth and the Moon.
NASA’s Small-Body Database gives an absolute magnitude for the object of 20.7, but without an albedo – the fraction of reflected light by the surface – it is very difficult to estimate its true size. The ballpark figure is between 190 and 430 meters (623 to 1,410 feet), and some observations in 2019 estimate it at 225 meters (738 feet).
This is the closest passage that this space rock will have with our planet for over a century. For this asteroid to pass closer to our planet than next week’s encounter one would have to wait until 2150 – coincidentally also around the same date, February 23.
Observations of asteroid 1999 VF 22 from last week. Image Credit: Gianluca Masi/ Virtual Telescope Project Its closest previous encounter was in 1999, on October 31. Despite being large and close to Earth, it was actually not discovered until days later on November 10 by the Catalina Sky Survey.
If you want to try to see it pass by, you’ll need a good telescope – or you can check out the live stream of our friends at the Virtual Telescope Project starting at 7 pm EST on February 21 below:
VIDEO AT LINK.................
Potentially hazardous means that its orbit brings it close enough to earth that it could at some time in the future be deflected by earth’s gravity (or other perturbing forces) into a collision course with earth, not that a collision is presently predicted or predictable.
It’s orbit carries well inside of Mercury’s to far (over 100,000,000 miles) past the orbit of Mars. It is moving smartly when it crosses the distance of earth’s orbit (it has enough kinetic energy to go another 150,000,000 further miles from the sun before it begins to fall back again towards it.) It is moving about 25 km/sec with respect to earth when it crosses earth’s orbit. If it ever hits earth, it will do a LOT of damage.
Not close enough! Can we setup a giant magnet or something?
Thanks Red Badger. Rocks that roll are here to stay.
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