Wednesday, January 19, 2022 – 6:55 PM
–
A potentially dangerous asteroid raced near Earth on January 18th. On January 17, 1933, the 1994 PC1 best approached our planet.
HVG NEWS
It is one of the larger near-Earth asteroids, so a potentially dangerous asteroid raced near Earth on Tuesday, January 18, before 11 p.m. According to the article on Csillagészet.hu, the celestial body was about 0.01325 CSE (astronomical unit) from our planet. This means a distance of 1.93 million kilometers. The small celestial body was discovered on August 9, 1994 by Robert H. McNaught at the Siding Spring Observatory.
According to orbital data from NASA’s JPL headquarters, the 1994 asteroid PC1 orbits the Sun in an elliptical orbit. The asteroid orbits the Sun in 572.19 days (1.56 years). Its orbital plane makes an angle of 33.4 degrees with the plane of the Earth’s orbit (ecliptic). Of the proximity to the earth in the last hundred years, the 1994 PC1 approached our planet best on January 17, 1933: it was 0.00542 CSE from us at the time.
The asteroid had a brightness of 10 magnitude during its proximity to Earth in Central European Time at 22:51, so it could be observed with smaller amateur astronomical telescopes and larger devices.
–
