Really Close Pass - 2022 FD1

[bigmasterdrago]

Yesterday morning ~4:12CDT, a rock from space about the size of DWs Mini Cooper flew by at a distance of just 18,811Km. While only mag 14.8, it was moving 3.2°/min!! At the time, it was well below my horizon (alt = -46°) in the SSW.
Lately, it has been clear that we are getting a good many small rocks passing close by and even impacting at times. At time, there are 41 rocks within 0.05AU of my location. Good example is the previous discovery 2022 FD, discovered just 2.4 days earlier. 31 of these rocks are new discoveries. Makes one wonder.

2d view from above. Sun to upper left.

   

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I put a video simulation of the last 5 day swarm at https://vimeo.com/692590645

[PMSchu]

Hi BMD,

I saw that one, but the show was already over when I caught it. The CNEOS website had a minimum Re of 9.9e-5 AU listed. Real close.

Here's a portion of the ephemeris that I calculated using ST4v (4.0j R12) & the MPC's NEAs at Today's Epoch elements for 2022 Mar 26 0000 UT: [attachment=2300]

The values in the Brief section don't agree because the Brief info was calculated using the elements for 2022 Mar 25 0000 UT.

Now that full moon is past, the number of new MP discovered will increase again. It's typically ~25 objects near full moon & ~2x as many near new moon.

Many of the new finds have H in the 26-30 range, so they're small & rarely get brighter than 17 magnitude even when they get within 0.005 AU or less.

Sometimes we get lucky though.

Phil S.