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Beijing, Bolong.id – China’s sky-monitoring telescope discovered two near-Earth asteroids…
Reporting from 人民网 Thursday (30/11/23), the two objects were first seen on November 18 2023 by the Wide Field Survey Telescope (WFST), which began operating in September 2023 in Qinghai Province, northwest China.
The Minor Planet Center under the International Astronomical Union later confirmed the discovery and assigned the two asteroids the codes: 2023 WX1 and 2023 WB2.
With an estimated diameter of 170 meters, 2023 WX1 is categorized as a Potentially Hazardous Asteroid, as it has a “Minimum Earth Orbital Intersection Distance of 0.0416 astronomical units,” equal to 6.22 million km, astronomers said in a statement on Wednesday.
Measuring 2.5 meters in diameter, the WFST was jointly developed by the University of Science and Technology of China and the Purple Mountain Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
In 2022, the telescope was nicknamed Mozi after the ancient Chinese philosopher Mozi, also known as Micius, who was said to be the first person in history to conduct optical experiments.
One of the main purposes of this telescope is to survey objects in the solar system.
According to Zhao Haibin, head of the WFST solar system study program, astronomers using the telescope have discovered a number of new main belt asteroids and rediscovered several near-Earth asteroids.
2023-12-01 06:39:00
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