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A newly found Asteroid 2013 EC will pass inside the orbit of the Moon on March 4, 2013

asteroid-2013-ec

A newly found asteroid, named 2013 EC will pass just inside the orbit of the Moon on March 4, 2013 at 07:35 UTC.  Asteroid 2013 EC is big about  8-17 meters , just about the size of the space rock that exploded over Russia on February 15, 2013.  It was discovered by the Mt. Lemmon Observatory in Arizona on March 2, 2013. 

A newly found asteroid, 2013 EC can be seen in the lower left corner of the red box in this image. Screen capture from Virtual Telescope webcast on 3/3/2013.

 

2013 EC will come within 396,000 kilometers from Earth, (246,000 miles, or around 1.0 lunar distances, 0.0026 AU), inside the orbit of the Moon. The Moon’s distance from the Earth varies between 363,104 km (225,622 miles) at perigee (closest) and 406,696 km (252,088 miles) at apogee (most distant point). There is no danger of collision with our planet.

On February 28, 2013 another newly discovered space rock – Asteroid 2013 EB, flew the same distance – 1LD from our planet. Its size was estimated about 16 meters.

JPL Small-Body Database Browser data

 

JPL Small Body Database

Gianluca Masi from the Virtual Telescope Project had a live view of the asteroid when it was about twice the distance of the Moon, and a replay of that webcast is available below.

YouTube video

 

Featured image credit: Footootjes.nl

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3 Comments

  1. All this recent asteroid business reminds me of this novel I just read called THE MYOSHI EFFECT which is about an asteroid headed toward earth and how everybody reacts and the government tries to find a way to deflect it. Granted the novel is humorous, like Dr Strangelove or Douglas Adams or something, but how we just reacted to these last 2 space rocks is almost taken from the pages of the book. Fiction and fact are fast becoming one.

  2. This is all weirdly like this book I just read, a novel called THE MYOSHI EFFECT. It’s done as humor, but the way people react to this asteroid headed toward earth and how they try to figure out how to destroy it – all sort of what is happening now. Canada plays a large role in the book too. Weird.

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