Huge 460-foot-wide ‘Christmas asteroid’ to pass Earth this week: How you can see it
A space rock up to 460 feet wide and named “Christmas asteroid” will pass by Earth this festive season.
The object, which poses no threat to our planet, will be less than 680,000 km (420,000 miles) away when it approaches on Thursday.
Stargazers in the Southern Hemisphere will have the best view of the asteroid, but those in Europe will also be able to spot it between now and December 19.
To mark the close approach, the European Space Agency is calling on amateur astronomers to find and photograph the space rock 2015 RN35.
Search! A space rock up to 460 feet wide and dubbed the ‘Christmas asteroid’ will pass Earth this festive season (stock image)
Key details: The object, which poses no threat to our planet, will reach 420,000 miles (686 km) when it approaches on Thursday.
“We don’t call this a challenge for no reason. In 2015 RN35 will not shine in the heavens like the Star of Bethlehem did millennia ago,” the agency said in a blog post on its website.
‘No. Smaller than the Statue of Liberty, this asteroid is quite small on an astronomical scale. And as the flybys pass, at just under twice the distance to the moon, it’s not likely to make headlines.’
However, ESA said that telescopes 11 inches (30 cm) or larger should be able to detect Asteroid Nadal.
“We look forward to your comments!” the agency added.
“Use the hashtag #ESAChristmasAsteroid on social media to share your results, which we will share on our @esaoperations channel.”
The asteroid is particularly interesting to scientists because it is not well known.
Experts don’t know what it’s made of, or exactly how big it is, or whether it spins on its axis.
They don’t even know its orbit particularly well, though they’ve confirmed that it won’t hit Earth for at least the next century.
This uncertainty means that there are hundreds of thousands of asteroids of similar size.
While scientists have found almost all the big planet killers, most of the mid-sized asteroids like the Nadal one have yet to be discovered.
Experts believe there are several hundred thousand of them that could do a lot of damage to a local area if they hit Earth.
The asteroid is particularly interesting to scientists because it is not well known. While scientists have found almost all of the huge planet killers, most mid-sized asteroids like the Nadal one have yet to be discovered.
Stargazers in the Southern Hemisphere will have the best view of the asteroid, but those in Europe will also be able to spot it between now and December 19.
To help amateur and professional astronomers spot the Christmas asteroid, ESA has a “toolkit” available to everyone for free.
It allows people to visualize the space rock’s orbit and its Dec. 15 flyby, including when it will be visible from different places on Earth.
Observers using the new Near-Earth Object (NEO) toolkit can also learn more about the Apollo asteroid group it belongs to, while planning how and where to spot it based on ‘where exactly they are in the world.
ESA’s Asteroid Toolkit has been created by the agency’s Rome-based Near-Earth Object Coordination Center (NEOCC).
“We use these tools every day to plan our observations, to visualize close approaches to asteroids, and to help us understand and explain the varied populations of asteroids in the Solar System and the risk we face,” said Juan- Luis Cano, NEOCC information system manager.
“We want them to be as useful to the rest of the world as they are to us, because planetary defense is a global effort.”
Experts don’t know the Christmas asteroid’s orbit particularly well, but they’ve confirmed that it won’t hit Earth for at least the next century.
Richard Moissl, ESA’s Head of Planetary Defense, said: “This is the kind of work ESA’s NEOCC does every day, often with even fainter asteroids using even larger telescopes, such as the Very Large Telescope (VLT) of the European Southern Observatory and others of the The NEOCC network of fast access telescopes extends around the world.
“With these observations, we determine the motion of asteroids and project their path into the future, to know if, when, an asteroid might hit.
“As the recent DART impact demonstrated, and as ESA’s Hera mission will expand, with enough warning, an asteroid impact is the only natural disaster we can prevent.”
The asteroid hunting toolkit includes the Observation planning tool, Sky graphics display tool, Orbit visualization tool and the Flyby visualization tool.
For more information on how to use it, click here.
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