Asteroid That Flew Past Earth Today Has Moon

[MohRokTah]

This is cool, and from yesterday:

Asteroid That Flew Past Earth Today Has Moon



This GIF shows asteroid 2004 BL86, which safely flew past Earth on Jan. 26, 2015. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Scientists working with NASA's 230-foot-wide (70-meter) Deep Space Network antenna at Goldstone, California, have released the first radar images of asteroid 2004 BL86. The images show the asteroid, which made its closest approach today (Jan. 26, 2015) at 8:19 a.m. PST (11:19 a.m. EST) at a distance of about 745,000 miles (1.2 million kilometers, or 3.1 times the distance from Earth to the moon), has its own small moon.

The 20 individual images used in the movie were generated from data collected at Goldstone on Jan. 26, 2015. They show the primary body is approximately 1,100 feet (325 meters) across and has a small moon approximately 230 feet (70 meters) across. In the near-Earth population, about 16 percent of asteroids that are about 655 feet (200 meters) or larger are a binary (the primary asteroid with a smaller asteroid moon orbiting it) or even triple systems (two moons). The resolution on the radar images is 13 feet (4 meters) per pixel.

The trajectory of asteroid 2004 BL86 is well understood. Monday's flyby was the closest approach the asteroid will make to Earth for at least the next two centuries. It is also the closest a known asteroid this size will come to Earth until asteroid 1999 AN10 flies past our planet in 2027.

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More from JPL

[elias49]

1. That gravity is everywhere!

Very cool.

[Fred Sanders]

3. Very cool...this is the stuff media should be snowing with blanket coverage.

There has to be a planet with moons whose moons have moons.

[Man from Pickens]

4. Probably not any stable ones

Moons will be located in gravity wells dominated by the parent planet. In order for one to be stable in its orbit, the parent planet's gravity hold on the moon has to be larger than that of the Sun, otherwise they'd both really be orbiting the Sun rather than one being a satellite of the other. Moons of moons are in an even more precarious position as they are much closer to planets than planets to suns, leaving them no stable orbit around the moon that isn't disrupted by the planet's gravity well. The moon-of-a-moon configuration isn't all that likely and might not even be possible.

Our Moon would be as likely a candidate as any for that configuration, given its size, and it has no moons of its own.

[Fred Sanders]

8. Interesting. There is a theory that there can be stable moons around a moon.

http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=679

[randome]

2. Of course mass would have much to do with whether an asteroid has a moon or not but cool stats!

The general dynamics are pretty well understood by now. We've come so far without even leaving our planet much.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Birds are territorial creatures.
The lyrics to the songbird's melodious trill go something like this:
"Stay out of my territory or I'll PECK YOUR GODDAMNED EYES OUT!"[/center][/font][hr]

[mountain grammy]

5. Very cool!

[FSogol]

6. Can we frack it?

[Johnny Rash]

7. Ok, people! We still have two more centuries to get our HOUSE, in order!

Unless, something else comes along to END us!



Remember T-Rex? Maybe, the dude that did it, is still around!

[Ryano42]

9. That's no moon...

[shenmue]

10. I scaired

[central scrutinizer]

11. It's mooning us

[link:|

[jberryhill]

12. No, it has a planet

[cwydro]

13. Cool pic!

[A HERETIC I AM]

14. Very cool! Wanna see something else cool/scary?

Check out this NASA .gif of asteroid J002E3 being captured by our gravity back in 2002/'03 and making several passes, a few between the moon's orbit;

[ColesCountyDem]

15. Science!