08:00 p.m
Thursday, January 26, 2023
Books – Youssef Afifi:
The Astronomical Society in Jeddah said that the Earth is witnessing today, Thursday, the transit of a newly discovered asteroid called 2023 BU from an altitude of only 3,500 km above South America within the belt of geosynchronous satellites at 12:17 after midnight Mecca time (09:17). evening GMT) and it is moving at 9.3 kilometers per second but there is no danger of it colliding.
And the society added, in a post on its official Facebook page, that the asteroid 2023 BU has a diameter of 5 meters, which means that it is very small according to the standards of standard asteroids, and it is not visible to the naked eye when it approaches, as its apparent luminosity will reach about (+17.7), even if we assume that it is on a collision course. It will become a fireball as it crashes through the Earth’s upper atmosphere, which happens several times a year for space rocks of this size.
And the association continued: According to some estimates, there are hundreds of millions of small asteroids the size of 2023 BU, but they are very difficult to detect until they come very close to Earth, and in all, the vast majority of them pass safely at much greater distances – usually much farther than the moon.
She indicated that finding these small nearby asteroids is considered an achievement because they pass quickly and there is usually a short window of a few days before or after a close approach when this small asteroid is close enough to Earth to be bright enough but not so close that it moves very quickly in the sky so that it cannot be detected by a telescope.
And the Astronomical Society in Jeddah stated that astronomers take advantage of such opportunities to learn more about asteroids from the nature of their formation, as these bodies are like a time machine from the remnants of the formation of our solar system that keep many secrets of that era and can tell us more about the origin of our planet, in addition to observing the movement of the asteroid. An excellent opportunity to test international NEO detection and tracking capabilities and assess our ability to respond together to any real future asteroid threat.
She indicated that, based on the latest high-precision orbit calculations, it was confirmed that it would not collide with Earth in the near future.
(embed)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dA5wb5q5ofo(/embed)
