country – follow-up
The head of the Astronomical Society in Jeddah, Majid Abu Zahra, said that a newly discovered asteroid called 2023 BU will pass near the Earth, today, Thursday, from an altitude of only 3,500 km above South America within the belt of geosynchronous satellites at 12:17 after midnight Mecca time (Mecca time). 09:17 pm GMT) and it is moving at 9.3 kilometers per second but there is no danger of it colliding.
And Abu Zahra explained in a statement 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), and if we assume that it is on a collision course, it will become A fireball crashes into Earth’s upper atmosphere, which happens many times a year for space rocks of this size.
The head of the Astronomical Society in Jeddah added that, according to some estimates, there are hundreds of millions of small asteroids the size of 2023 BU, but it is very difficult to detect them, until they come very close to Earth, and in total the vast majority of them pass safely at much greater distances, usually much further. from the moon.
He pointed out that it is considered an achievement to find these small nearby asteroids, because they pass quickly and there is usually a short window of a few days before or after the close approach when this small asteroid is close enough to Earth to be bright enough, but not so close that it moves quickly. so large in the sky that it cannot be detected by a telescope.
Abu Zahra pointed out that he takes advantage of such opportunities to learn more about asteroids, such as the nature of their formation, as these bodies are like a time machine from remnants that form our solar system, and they keep many of the secrets of that era, and they can tell us more about the origin of our planet.
He also explained that observing the movement of the asteroid is an excellent opportunity to test the international capabilities to detect and track near-Earth objects and evaluate our ability to respond together to any real threat to any asteroid in the future, based on the latest high-precision orbit calculations that have been confirmed that it will not collide with Earth in the near future.
Posted by Albilad Newspaper
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