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Keyword: 2021ph27

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  • Astronomers discover skyscraper-size asteroid hidden in sun's glare -- and it's moving at a near-record pace

    10/24/2025 5:27:44 PM PDT · by SunkenCiv · 18 replies
    Live Science ^ | published 2 days ago | Patrick Pester
    Astronomers have discovered a 2,300-foot-wide (700 meters) asteroid hidden in the sun's glare, and it’s whizzing through our solar system at a near record-breaking pace.The skyscraper-size asteroid, named 2025 SC79, loops around the sun once every 128 days, giving it the second-fastest asteroid orbit in the solar system. It is also only the second known space object that orbits entirely inside of Venus' orbit, occasionally even crossing the orbit of Mercury.Scott Sheppard, an astronomer at the Carnegie Science research institute in Washington, D.C., first spotted 2025 SC79 on Sep. 27...To put its 2,300-foot diameter in context, the so-called "city-killer" asteroid...
  • Scientists discover far-off threat in ‘planet killer’ asteroid

    11/01/2022 9:37:19 AM PDT · by Red Badger · 17 replies
    Washington Examiner ^ | October 31, 2022 05:53 PM | by Ryan King, Breaking News Reporter
    video at link................ Scientists have discovered three elusive asteroids lurking in a region of space near the sun often cloaked by solar glare, including one they say has the capacity to deliver planetary devastation. One of the asteroids, 2022 AP7, is roughly 1 mile wide and crosses Earth's orbit trajectory around the sun, rendering it one of the most "hazardous" asteroids discovered in the past eight years, a team of researchers announced Monday. “Our twilight survey is scouring the area within the orbits of Earth and Venus for asteroids," said Scott Sheppard, an astronomer at the Earth and Planets Laboratory...
  • Newly Discovered Space Rock Loops The Sun Quicker Than Any Known Asteroid

    08/24/2021 6:10:15 AM PDT · by Red Badger · 8 replies
    https://www.sciencealert.com ^ | 24 AUGUST 2021 | MICHELLE STARR
    Artist's impression of 2021 PH27. (Katherine Cain/Carnegie Institution for Science) A newly discovered asteroid has the second-shortest orbit that we know in the entire Solar System, pipped only by Mercury. It's named 2021 PH27, and it takes just 113 days to complete a circuit around the Sun, on an unstable elliptical orbit that crosses the orbital paths of both Venus and Mercury. This means that it comes extremely close to the Sun at its closest approach, or perihelion, skimming close enough to reach scorching temperatures up to 480 degrees Celsius (900 Fahrenheit). It also means that the asteroid's time is...
  • Fastest-orbiting asteroid in solar system discovered

    08/23/2021 8:56:49 PM PDT · by BenLurkin · 15 replies
    space.com ^ | Mike Wall
    A newfound asteroid zips around the sun faster than any of its known kin. The space rock, known as 2021 PH27, completes one lap around our star every 113 Earth days, its discoverers determined. That's the shortest orbital period of any known solar system object except the planet Mercury, which takes just 88 days to loop around the sun. However, 2021 PH27 travels on a much more elliptical path than Mercury does and therefore gets considerably closer to the sun — about 12.4 million miles (20 million kilometers) at closest approach, compared to 29 million miles (47 million km) for...