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Toutatis and 2012 XE54

ps200306 · 2012-12-15 21:28:55

On Wednesday the earth had a close (4 million km+) encounter with asteroid Toutatis. A nice animation from radar images here: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/asteroids/news/asteroid20121214.html It's three miles long, and amazingly (given the distance) the image is less than 4 metres per pixel. Less well advertised was…

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15-12-2012 10:28pm

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ps200306

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On Wednesday the earth had a close (4 million km+) encounter with asteroid Toutatis. A nice animation from radar images here:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/asteroids/news/asteroid20121214.html

It's three miles long, and amazingly (given the distance) the image is less than 4 metres per pixel.

Less well advertised was the encounter the night before with asteroid 2012 XE54. It's about 40 metres wide and, unlike Toutatis which has been tracked for over 20 years, it was only discovered at the start of the week! Encounters with newly discovered objects like XE54 which pass closer than the orbit of the moon apparently happen several times a month. While they don't have the planet killing potential of something like Toutatis, they'd still make a nuclear bomb-sized bang if they were to hit the earth.

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