Greetings from the Astronomical Search Collaboration
Congratulations!! Congratulations!!
P. Jhaveri, A. Shah, & M. Shastri from Navrachana School,Vadodara (India), Space Nodal Centre made a virtual impactor observation (VIO) of 2010 NB2 on July 19th. A VIO is more important than even a Main Belt asteroid discovery.
When NEOs are first discovered, the impact risk with Earth is evaluated. If that risk is high enough, the NEO is placed onto the potentially hazardous asteroid list maintained by the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (Pasadena, CA). They stay on that list until the orbit has been further refined and the impact risk is reassessed. So far all reassessments have lead to the NEOs from being removed from the list...thank goodness!!
The observation made by P. Jhaveri, A. Shah, & M. Shastri lead to 2010 NB2 being officially removed from the list. This is a very rare and important observation. Good Job!!
Information on 2010 NB2
The orbit of 2010 NB2 varies between 0.5 AU and 3.7 AU from the Sun. It comes within 0.1 AU of Earth (15 million km). It orbits around the Sun every 3.0 years. Its orbit is highly inclined to the ecliptic at 28.7 degrees, meaning that its orbit was disturbed by a collision with another asteroid or the massive planet Jupiter.
Jupiter is the likely culprit. It frequently dislodges asteroids from the Main Belt and sends them on a collision path with Earth.
No Image Sets from August 11th
The skies are currently overcast at the ARI Observatory so there will be no new image sets from August 11th. However, sets remain available to be analyzed by your students. These sets are dated August 7-10.
Happy Hunting!!
Dr. Patrick Miller
Department of Mathematics & Astronomy
Holland School of Science & Mathematics
Hardin-Simmons University
Abilene, TX 79698
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