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A “potentially dangerous asteroid” about half a mile long will dart past Earth this weekend, giving passionate astronomers a chance to see it fly.
The space rock, larger than most skyscrapers on Earth, will pass above us in the early hours of Sunday, November 29th.
Although the asteroid, quickly named Asteroid 2000 WO107, has been labeled a “potentially dangerous asteroid” due to its close proximity, no impact hazard has been detected and its orbital course is well known.
When it crosses the sky on Sunday, it will be about 11 times further from Earth than the Moon and traveling at over 56,000 miles per hour.
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University of Hull astronomer Professor Brad Gibson, director of the EA Milne Center for Astrophysics, said the asteroid will be one of the largest to reach a million miles from Earth this decade.
“While this sounds like a lot, it’s actually a very small distance when compared to the incredibly vast size of the solar system,” he said.
“However, it raises questions about how it would impact Earth if a collision occurred.
(Image: Hull University)
“Thankfully, it’s nowhere near as large as the device that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, but it would be large enough to destroy a region roughly the size of Europe.”
To contextualize its size, the asteroid that caused the 1908 Tunguska event in Siberia – in which 830 square miles of forest was flattened – was only one-tenth the size of asteroid 2000 WO107.
Although the rock will not be visible to the naked eye, amateur astronomers should be able to locate it using only a relatively small eight-inch or larger telescope.
It will look like a slow moving star and should pass overhead at 5.08am on Sunday morning.
Professor Gibson said: ‘There is a profound excitement to be felt from the asteroids, as every piece of rock comes from the very beginning of our solar system.
“They are essentially pristine fossils of the creation of the Solar System. When you split one and examine the various chemical elements and isotopes within it, you get an instant snapshot of what our solar system looked like five billion years ago.”
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The University of Hull is fortunate to possess a variety of these special “moon rocks”. As part of an immersive 3D experience designed to explore the history of the moon, students can see two fragments, one inch in diameter, and have the ability to hold a real piece of the moon.
In addition, they also purchased a fragment of the Chelyabinsk Meteor, which in 2013 became the largest object to have entered the Earth’s atmosphere since the 1908 Tunguska event.
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