Earth Approaching Objects : November 18th, 2015

 

All Sky Fireball Network

 

by Dr. Tony Phillips.


Every night, a network of NASA all-sky cameras scans the skies above the United States for meteoritic fireballs. Automated software maintained by NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office calculates their orbits, velocity, penetration depth in Earth's atmosphere and many other characteristics. Daily results are presented here on Spaceweather.com.

On Nov. 17, 2015, the network reported 38 fireballs.
(23 sporadics, 9 Northern Taurids, 3 Leonids, 2 November I Draconids, 1 omicron Eridanid)

In this diagram of the inner solar system, all of the fireball orbits intersect at a single point--Earth. The orbits are color-coded by velocity, from slow (red) to fast (blue). [Larger image] [movies]

Near Earth Asteroids

Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs) are space rocks larger than approximately 100m that can come closer to Earth than 0.05 AU. None of the known PHAs is on a collision course with our planet, although astronomers are finding new ones all the time.

On November 18, 2015 there were 1634 potentially hazardous asteroids.

Recent & Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters:

Asteroid	Date(UT)	Miss Distance	Size
2015 VR64	Nov 12	3 LD	14 m
2015 VV105	Nov 13	9 LD	10 m
2015 VU65	Nov 14	5.2 LD	23 m
2015 VY105	Nov 15	0.09 LD	7 m
2015 VN105	Nov 16	5.5 LD	13 m
2015 VD105	Nov 16	7.2 LD	52 m
2015 VC106	Nov 18	7 LD	24 m
2005 UL5	Nov 20	5.9 LD	390 m
2015 VE66	Nov 21	7.5 LD	64 m
2015 VO142	Nov 24	1 LD	7 m
2015 VH2	Nov 24	12.9 LD	14 m
2003 EB50	Nov 29	48.8 LD	2.2 km
2007 BG29	Dec 1	54.1 LD	1.1 km
2015 VZ145	Dec 8	9.2 LD	81 m
1998 WT24	Dec 11	10.9 LD	1.1 km
2011 YD29	Dec 24	9.7 LD	24 m
2003 SD220	Dec 24	28.4 LD	1.8 km
2008 CM	Dec 29	22.8 LD	1.5 km
2004 MQ1	Jan 2	55.4 LD	1.1 km
1999 JV6	Jan 6	12.6 LD	410 m

Notes: LD means "Lunar Distance." 1 LD = 384,401 km, the distance between Earth and the Moon. 1 LD also equals 0.00256 AU. MAG is the visual magnitude of the asteroid on the date of closest approach.