back to article Blink and you missed it: Asteroid came within 90,000 km, only one sky-watcher saw it

A small asteroid made a rare, close pass between Earth and the moon on August 28. 2016 QA2 is estimated by the Minor Planet Center (MPC) as being somewhere between 25 and 55 metres in diameter – so small that it nearly passed without notice. The MPC's note about the asteroid attributes its discovery to Brazil's SONEAR …

  1. wolfetone Silver badge

    Funnily enough I thought I was having a bad day on Sunday. Turns out, I was actually rather lucky!

    1. Forget It
      Joke

      I guess you were between a Rock and a hard place then.

      1. wolfetone Silver badge
        Pint

        @Forget It

        It's funny how only one star gazer saw that asteriod, but at least three people have seen what you did there.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          "what you did there".

          Is it just me or is this another annoying Americanism used to alert the unalert to something that wasn't deserving of an alert in the first place?

          1. ZippedyDooDah

            No it's not just you. It is a dumb Americanism for dumb Americans. I wish it would stay over there.

  2. frank ly

    At its closest pass, whatever distance it is, would its orbit around the sun be affected by earth's gravity and maybe make it come closer next time?

    1. Pascal Monett Silver badge

      Or the change imposed by a close fly-by of Earth could send it careening too close to the Sun and get it ejected from the solar system entirely.

      Don't know, not an astronomer, but theoretically it should be possible.

      The much more likely outcome is that it will just smack into our home planet someday. Maybe over the ocean, so as not to harm anyone, but within sight of some camera or satellite, so we can get high-resolution footing out of the explosion. That might focus some minds on the issue before it is too late.

      1. Afernie

        "That might focus some minds on the issue before it is too late."

        Yes, after all asteroid defence expenditure sky-rocketed after Chelyabinsk. Oh, wait....

        It will take nothing less that a major strike on a populated area to tear attention away from the standard news-cycle.

        1. imanidiot Silver badge

          Just to be my usual cynical self:

          It's not noteworthy because it was in Russia, so really really far away and unlikely to happen anywhere in the civilised world. Right?

      2. anthonyhegedus Silver badge

        home planet? as opposed to our summer holiday planet?

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Maybe over the ocean, so as not to harm anyone

          As I understand things land strikes tend to be less damaging...sea strikes spread the damage further.

    2. Version 1.0 Silver badge

      At its closest pass, whatever distance it is, would its orbit around the sun be affected by earth's gravity and maybe make it come closer next time?

      It's possible, but just as likely that it would move further away. You can calculate it but there are still many unknowns so the results are not certain either way.

      1. Omgwtfbbqtime
        Trollface

        @Version 1.0

        Ahh.. but are they known unknowns?

    3. Yesnomaybe

      Probably a bit too soon to say how much the orbit changed, but yes. I think we'll meet this one again.

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      You could onto something here. I believe a chap called Kepler has a similar idea supported by some clever sums.

  3. ntevanza

    Get a job

    Cheap thrill-seeking by bored asteroids threatens our species with extinction. Rather than demonize and alienate them, we should be working to get them into gainful employment.

    1. Chris G

      Re: Get a job

      Perhaps a job as a rock star?

      1. W4YBO

        Re: Get a job

        "Perhaps a job as a rock star?"

        Heavy metal.

    2. wolfetone Silver badge

      Re: Get a job

      Maybe we should build a wall to keep the asteroids out and get them to pay for it?

  4. Gene Cash Silver badge
    FAIL

    Facebook announcement?

    That's a quality peer-review journal!

    1. Tom 7

      Re: Facebook announcement?

      which may have instantly alerted other astonomers so they could take a look whereas a peer reviewed journal would leave them waiting for ever to get it peer reviewed.

      1. Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge

        Re: Facebook announcement?

        I trust they informed the IAU's CBAT or MPC NEO pages as well. That is the standard procedure.

        1. Tom 7

          Re: Facebook announcement?

          True - but they are not quite as quick as facebook - mind you if I was watching this thing I doubt if I'd stop and jump online before it went past...

    2. Benchops

      Re: Facebook announcement?

      It /is/ peer reviewed. If their peers are other facebook users and the reviews are "Likes".

  5. Tom_

    Distance fropm the sun

    "The orbit is tilted 15.65° relative to Earth's orbit, and an eccentricity of 0.21, which the announcement says sends it between around 185,000 km and 285,000 km from the Sun, on a 350-day period."

    Shouldn't these be millions of kilometres, rather than thousands?

    1. Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge
      Happy

      Re: Distance fropm the sun

      Yes, absolutely

      but then what are three zeroes between friends ;-)

    2. GrumpyOldMan

      Re: Distance fropm the sun

      I'm tilted a bit more than 5.65° relative to Earth's orbit - especially after a few pints, an eccentricity of way more than 0.21.

      1. Rich 11

        Re: Distance fropm the sun

        My eccentricity is about 5.0 (though perhaps a bit less if I were to recalculate based upon the unfortunate recent growth of my beer belly).

        1. W4YBO

          Re: My eccentricity is about 5.0...

          A bit hyperbolic, but congratulations on your gravimetric enhancement. We can hold our ground in a stiff wind.

    3. Stuart 34

      Re: Distance fropm the sun

      > Shouldn't these be millions of kilometres, rather than thousands?

      I reckon so, but since the Earth/Sun distance at the moment is 149.6 million km the numbers still wouldn't make sense

    4. VinceH
      Facepalm

      Re: Distance fropm the sun

      Having only just read this article, clearly the numbers have been corrected - but it's interesting to see that they've gone from "between around 185,000 km and 285,000 km from the Sun" to "between around 115,000,000 km and 177,000,000 km from the Sun" - so the mistake wasn't a simple rounding error. (And the new figures make sense with Earth's semi-major axis.)

      So I wonder what caused that mistake - and I wonder if it's in some way related to the disagreement about its future near miss with us:

      "This pass was harmless, but if SONEAR's current characterisation of 2016 QA2's orbit is correct (more observations will be made, we're certain), it will come very close one day: “the minimum distance between the orbital 2016 QA2 and the earth is only 60 miles away” – or a bit over 95 km.

      SONEAR doesn't mention when that's likely take place; a much more reassuring number comes from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which gives the minimum orbit intersection distance (MOID) as 0.00037 astronomical units – or 55,000 km."

      60 miles versus 55,000 km - something rounded to the nearest 1,000 coupled with an accidental unit change perhaps? Checking ther SONEAR observatory Facebook post, that actually says 60,000km.

      Ah, or perhaps a mistranslation - the Portuguese part says "A distância minima orbital entre o 2016 QA2 e a Terra é de apenas 60 mil km" - did someone perhaps mistranslate 60 mil (meaning sixty thousand) as 60 miles?

  6. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    It makes these asteroid mining ventures a little more realistic. Just wait for the asteroid to land before you mine it - once it's cooled down, of course.

    1. phuzz Silver badge
      Mushroom

      If it actually gets within 95km of the Earth, it'll practically be aerobraking. Just a little nudge there and you could get it into orbit without having to expend much fuel.

      If you get it wrong however >>>>>

      1. brotherelf

        It's the kind of distance where I start to wonder if that's center-to-center or surface-to-surface or has some value for atmosphere factored in, yes. Let's see how sturdy my tinfoil hat is.

    2. Tom 7

      @ Doctor Syntax

      Quite the opposite - the outside of these things can get a tad warm but the insides are often in the low 10s of kelvin so I'd wait until it warms up or your equipment might just break with the cold.

      1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: @ Doctor Syntax

        But it's like beauty which is only skin deep but then the skin's the only thing you see.

    3. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

      Re: asteroid mining on earth

      Sudbury basin

  7. kmac499

    zzzzzZZZZIIIINNNNGGGGggggg......... WTF was that?

    1. DJV Silver badge

      ...the strings of your heart?

  8. Stevie

    Bah!

    You'd have thought someone would have heard the whoosh as it swept past.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      They can't hear you whoosh in space.

      At least someone was looking if not listening.

  9. Bill Gray

    A few corrections/extensions :

    @wolfetone : "It's funny how only one star gazer saw that asteroid..."

    Quite a few did. After SONEAR saw it, two observatories in Australia confirmed the discovery. Then several observatories in Europe (including one in the UK) caught it as it came closer to perigee. It's a bit of a long story for a forum post; details are at

    http://www.projectpluto.com/s510921.htm

    Suffice to say that MPC rarely announces objects based on observations from a single observatory.

    @frank ly : yes, the orbit was _very_ much affected by the flyby. Before then, it had an orbital period of about 350 days, and went from 0.7636 AU at perihelion to 1.18045 AU at apohelion or aphelion or whatever you want to call it (opinions vary). Multiply those distances by about 149.598 million to get kilometers, and by something else to get gigalinguine or whatever the official

    El Reg units are.

    After the flyby, it'll take about 336 days to get around the sun, and those distances will be 0.7168 AU and 1.17482 AU. So the summers will be a little hotter, and the winters about the same.

    @brotherelf : "It's the kind of distance where I start to wonder if that's center-to-center or surface-to-surface..." Minimum distance from the earth's center was 86573 +/- 2 km, or about thirteen earth radii.

    More technical details are at

    http://www.projectpluto.com/neocp2/mpecs/S510921.htm

    1. ZippedyDooDah

      Re: A few corrections/extensions :

      Brilliant info on that first link, many thanks. It answers just about every question raised here.

      I wish I could "follow" you. Is that possible on El Rego?

  10. Benchops

    Optional

    We never get news stories (or facebook posts) about the near-miss asteroids that no-one notices.

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