Astroblog: Asteroid 2005 YU55 will Not Hit the Earth (but you knew that)

Friday, November 04, 2011

Asteroid 2005 YU55 will Not Hit the Earth (but you knew that)

Left image: Simulation of Earth as seen from 2005 YU55 at closest approach. Right Image: Simulation of the Moon as seen from 2005 YU55 at closest approach to Earth. Simulated in Celestia (Click to embiggen).

Now that comet 2010 X1 Elenin is a handful of dust, the Doomsayers have had to find a new object to panic about. They have found it in the form of the asteroid 2005 YU55. This 400 meter chunk of rock is now the focus of their inchoate fears. It has eclipsed the previous doom asteroid, Apophis, which is of a similar size, for the moment, despite not being on the list of potentially hazardous asteroids.

As with Elenin, this panic is largely due to people not appreciating the scale of the solar system. In comparison to the distance between the Sun and Pluto, YU55's upcoming encounter with Earth is close. But the asteroid comes no closer than 85% of the distance between the Earth and the Moon (350,000 km). In contrast, Apophis will come within the orbits of geosynchronous satellites in 2029, (12,000 km, over 20 times closer) and will not hit us. Heck, earlier this year 2011 MN skimmed above the geosynchronous satellite zone without hitting us. And back in 1976 2010 XC15 came within 0.5 Earth-Moon distances without hitting us.

Left image: Orbit of 2005 YU55 at closest approach as seen from above. Right Image: Orbit of 2005 YU55 at closest approach as seen from the side. The asteroid is significantly above the plane of Earths orbit. Simulated in Celestia (Click to embiggen).

Could we be mistaken about the orbit of 2005 YU55? We have a very good idea of the orbit of this asteroid based on over 700 observations between 2005 and 2010. It's orbit was refined further when it was observed by the Arecbio radio telescope in 2010. Remember, we have a very good understanding of the orbital dynamics of asteroids, thanks to a gentleman called Newton. We are able to send tiny spacecraft across the trackless void to rendezvous with asteroids, something impossible if we could not predict their orbits with high precision.

But let's look at this another way, let's assume that our understanding of the orbit of 2005 YU55 was so bad that it could be within 50% of it's predicted position. Then at its closest it would be about 125,00 km away, well away from us, and no threat of collision.

Chart of the sky as seen from Australia on 9 Nov from astronomical twilight on. Ticks show the asteroids position at half hour intervals. Click to embiggen.

It will be closest to us on November 8, 23:39 UT, this translates out to around 10:30 am AEDST on the 9th in Australia, still from astronomical twilight on the 9th Australian observers will be able to see it scream along low above the northern horizon.

With strong Moonlight, you will need at least a 6" scope to be able to see the 11-12th magnitude asteroid (remember unaided eye visibility threshold is around magnitude 6 without moonlight, and in binoculars under moonlight you are pushing to g below magnitude 8, unless you have super tripod astronomical binoculars), and it moves so fast you will be ale to see it move visibly against the background stars as you watch.

The closeness of the asteroid means that it's elements break most planetarium programs (eg. Stellarium puts the asteroid in completely the wrong position, and SkyMap is a little off). You will have to generate a topocentric ephemeris from the using the MPEC ephemeris generator, if you enter the latitude and longitude of your site, into the box in the ephemeris generator it will create a correct topocentric ephemeris for your site. My GRAS observing tips are here, and more observing tips here.

I've also made a Celestia file for you. As usual, copy the code below and save as it as a file 2005YU55.ssc in the Celestia extras folder.
======================2005YU55.ssc=============================
"2005 YU55" "Sol"
{
Class "asteroid"
Mesh "ky26.cmod"
Texture "asteroid.jpg"
Radius 0.4 # maximum semi-axis
MeshCenter [ -0.000718 -0.000099 0.000556 ]

InfoURL "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_YU55"

EllipticalOrbit
{
Epoch 2455800.5 # Epoch 2011 Aug. 27.0
Period 1.22
SemiMajorAxis 1.1427166
Eccentricity 0.4289481
Inclination 0.51346
AscendingNode 39.31601
ArgOfPericenter 268.77407
MeanAnomaly 348.84963
}

RotationPeriod 0.9

Albedo 0.15

}
===========================================================

Labels: asteroids, celestia, Pseudoscience, science communicators

# posted by Ian Musgrave @ 8:12 pm

Comments:

Great article Ian. Thank you for the link to the wiki article on 2010 XC15. :)

# posted by

Kevin Heider : 9:47 am

Are you sure you are correct? I know even if the asteroid was going to impact the Earth the info would have been kept secret. Or am I wrong? I know I am a little afraid about what could happen. Should I be? I am also not sure about the wiki articles, many times these articles are not accurate.

# posted by

Anonymous : 6:06 am

Sounds like you work for NASA's disinformation group. You are so funny, no one is buying what you are selling.

# posted by

Anonymous : 9:12 am

Anonymous#1 Yes, we are sure. As I said, the orbits have been worked out from over 700 observations from amateurs and professionals alike. Newtonian dynamics are very well understood, every year we observe thousands of objects, and we can even account for the minute deviation caused by uneven heating of the surface of these objects. As I said the accuracy and precision of our ability to correctly predict these orbits allow us to send spacecraft to them, where even small errors in the determination of the asteroids orbit will mean the spacecraft misses.

Not only that, as hundreds of amateurs have observed and calculated the asteroids path, if something was untoward the amateur community would know (and we aren't known for keeping silent).

For example the 2011 MN orbit was correct from far fewer observations and I imaged it as it skimmed just above the Earth, far closer than 2005 YU55 will be. If we were certain of the orbit of 2011 MN, then we are far more certain of the orbit of 2005 YU55.

As I type, amateurs are gearing up for an intense observing campaign to complement high resolution radar imaging of the asteroids surface. These asteroids are scientifically interesting, and you should not be even the tiniest bit afraid.

# posted by

Ian Musgrave : 9:53 am

The two Celestia images at the top of the article show the *radius* as 400m. Isn't that its diameter?

# posted by

Anonymous : 1:23 pm

AHRRGGG - reading/proof reading fail. the RADIUS should be 200 Km, not 400. thanks for picking that up.

# posted by

Ian Musgrave : 1:52 pm

200m, not Km ;)

# posted by

Anonymous : 2:03 pm

Thanks, I very much appreciate the info:)
Anonymous#1