A giant asteroid, believed to be the same width as the height of the Empire State Building, will fly towards Earth this weekend. But experts say there’s no reason to panic, even though it’s technically classified as a “ potentially dangerous asteroid. ”
“There is no threat of a collision with our planet now or in the coming centuries,” officials from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory said in a statement released earlier this month.
Despite its designation as a “near-earth asteroid,” this massive space rock, known as 2001 FO32, will take off at super-fast speed about 1.25 million miles from our planet on Sunday, March 21, NASA noted. That is more than five times the distance between the Earth and the Moon.
“We know very accurately the 2001 FO32 orbit path around the Sun since it was discovered 20 years ago and has been tracked ever since,” said Paul Chodas, director of the Center for Near Earth Object Studies, operated by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in NASA. Southern California. “There is no chance that the asteroid will get closer to Earth than 1.25 million miles.”
In astronomical measurements, however, this is considered a close call.
A large asteroid, known as 2001 FO32, will race to Earth this weekend, making its closest approach on Sunday, March 21. Experts say there is no threat of collision with our planet.Photo Illustration Buddy Nath | Pixabay
Where asteroids come from
Asteroids are solid, rocky objects that orbit our sun. “They are remnants left over from the formation of our solar system,” explains NASA. “They can be about as wide as a car to about as wide as the state of Utah.” (In case you’re wondering, Utah is about 270 miles wide and 350 miles long.)
Most of the asteroids that fly around our solar system come from a rock-filled area called the asteroid belt, NASA says. “This enormous ring-shaped ring between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter contains hundreds of thousands of asteroids – maybe even millions.”
The Center for Near Earth Object Studies, known as CNEOS, uses Earth and space telescopes to keep tabs on all the asteroids and comets flying through the universe – and to look for new ones that have not yet been identified. Their job is to determine if any of those space objects could pose a risk to our planet.
On Sunday, the asteroid known as FO32 2001 will be closest to Earth, at 77,000 miles per hour. NASA says this space rock will not return to our region of the solar system until 2052.
When discovered in March 2001, the asteroid was estimated to be about 3,000 feet wide. A later analysis calculated the width to be somewhere between 1,300 and 2,230 feet.
In comparison, the Empire State Building is 1,454 feet tall, including the tip. The Freedom Tower in the World Trade Center complex in Lower Manhattan extends 1,776 feet high.
A large asteroid, known as 2001 FO32, will race to Earth this weekend, making its closest approach on Sunday, March 21. Experts say there is no threat of collision with our planet.Photo illustration Frantisek Krejci | Pixabay
How to see the giant asteroid
Although this asteroid is huge, astronomy experts say it will be difficult to spot – especially from the northern United States and other parts of the northern hemisphere.
“This will not be easy for us to see in New Jersey, or most of the US,” said Amie Gallagher, director of the planetarium at Raritan Valley Community College in Somerset County.
“For observers from New Jersey, the asteroid will be only about six or seven degrees above the southern horizon at its highest altitude. It won’t be very smart either, ”noted Gallagher. ‘You need a telescope 20 cm in diameter or larger to observe the asteroid. This will be more easily observed in the Southern Hemisphere or lower latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere. “
The great asteroid will closest to Earth around noon on Sunday, but Gallagher said the best time for skywatchers to look for it would be when the sky is dark, around 3 a.m. Sunday. She said the asteroid will be in front of the stars of the constellation Lupus, next to Scorpius.
If you don’t live in the correct geographic region or if you don’t have a powerful telescope, you have another opportunity to see the giant asteroid. You can watch a live video feed planned by the Virtual Telescope Project, an online observatory in Rome.
The Virtual Telescope Project says it will show the asteroid for a few hours Monday morning, when the space rock flies past Earth. The video feed is scheduled to begin at 4 a.m. UTC, which is midnight Sunday for us people in the Eastern Daylight Time zone.
“The asteroid will be brightest as it moves through the southern sky,” said Chodas, the man who leads the Center for Near Earth Object Studies.
“Amateur astronomers in the southern hemisphere and low northern latitudes should be able to see this asteroid using medium-sized telescopes with openings of at least eight inches in the nights leading up to the closest approach,” Chodas said, “but they will likely use star maps to calculate it. find. “
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Len Melisurgo can be reached at [email protected]