Halloween treat for the Earth: this night touched by a large meteorite
On a trick-or-treat scale for potentially dangerous space objects, the recently discovered asteroid 2022 RM4 will play a game on the earth by brushing it right between October 31 and November 1.
Hawaii's Pan-Starrs Observatory first identified 2022 RM4 in September, and the International Astronomical Union's Center for Minor Planets made the official announcement of the asteroid on September 15. Researchers are still defining the details of the asteroid, but it could be 740 meters in diameter, two and a half times the height of the Eiffel Tower.
Astronomers are always finding new asteroids, but the size and proximity of 2022 RM 4 makes it remarkable. It is predicted to approach 1.4 million miles (2.3 million kilometers) from our planet. It is a distance equal to about six times that of the Moon from the Earth, but which on a spatial scale is defined as very small, especially due to the size of this asteroid.
The Virtual Telescope Project plans to livestream the flyby of the asteroid on November 1 at 10 am. The founder of the VTP, Gianluca Masi, followed the asteroid and captured images that portray it as a small bright spot.
Gianluca Masi
The Virtual Telescope Project captured this view of asteroid 2022 RM4 as it approaches for a flyby to Earth. The white arrow points to the asteroid.
NASA's JPL Center for Near Earth Object Studies maintains a list of approaches. The listing shows that 2022 RM4 has a rarity of “2”. Rarity is a "measure of how infrequent the approach to Earth is for asteroids of the same size and larger." The designation "2" means that asteroids like this only show up once a year.
Although 2022 RM4 is large and cosmically close, it poses no danger to us. At the most it will be useful to evaluate the riskiness of such phenomena. Additionally, scientists around the world have been working to improve our ability to spot potentially dangerous asteroids and map their future paths. NASA's DART mission demonstrates one possible way to defend our planet from a truly dangerous asteroid: plunging it onto a safer route. So there is no “Don't Look Up” scenario.
However, the asteroid will pass so close that it is easily visible even by amateur astronomers.
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The article Halloween treat for the Earth: this night touched by a large meteorite comes from Economic Scenarios .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/scherzetto-di-halloween-per-la-terra-questa-notte-sfiorati-da-un-grosso-meteorite/ on Mon, 31 Oct 2022 21:05:56 +0000.