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Potentially hazardous asteroids |
| Add to your RedShift's catalog recently discovered potentially hazardous asteroids that have close approaches to Earth orbit. These objects are qualified for the SPACEGUARD survey and observed especially carefully. |
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Sedna (2003 VB12) |
NASA astronomers have announced the discovery of the most distant object orbiting our Sun. With a diameter of perhaps 1,000 miles, Sedna or 2003 VB12, as it was originally designated, is about two-thirds the size of Pluto. It was discovered using the Mt Palomar facility in November by astronomers from the California Institute of Technology, Yale Observatory and the Gemini Observatory. The new object is said to orbit the Sun every 10,500 years and may be trailed by a tiny moon. Although Sedna could be a so-called Kuiper Belt object, its discoverers doubt this. The object's elliptical orbit is unlike anything previously seen by astronomers. It could be the first detection of the long- hypothesized "Oort cloud", a faraway repository of small icy bodies that supplies some of the comets that streak by Earth. Sedna's size is likely to reignite the debate about what constitutes a planet. Many astronomers believe that Pluto was designated a planet only because it was found six decades before the first KBO. Discoverers estimate they will find as many as 10 new, large KBOs in the next few years, including a few objects larger than Pluto (ref: MPEC 2004-E45).
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 22:03:2004 |
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2004 BV18 |
2004 BV18 was discovered by a volunteer, amateur astronomer, analyzing data gathered by the University of Arizona's Spacewatch program on January 19, 2004. 60-to-120-foot diameter asteroid missed Earth by about 1.2 million miles on Jan. 22 (ref: Dr. Ed. Bowell's solution).
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01:03:2004 |
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