2014 RC - a close fly-by coming up
2014 RC - a close fly-by coming up
neo admin
In the evening of 07 September 2014, the newly discovered asteroid 2014 RC will have a very close fly-by of just above 30000 km to our planet. The object is estimated to be between 10 and 30 m in size. While the fly-by is very close,there is no chance that the object will hit the Earth.
2014 RC was announced as a newly discovered object by the Minor Planet Center in the US on 02 September 2014. Its fly-by velocity will be fairly slow, just around 11 km per second. The European NEODyS system finds a nominal fly-by distance to the Earth's surface of 33587 km, which is just inside the geostationary ring.
The close approach time will be between 18:00 and 18:15 UTC on 07 September 2014 (Update: the revised close approach time was 18:02 UTC). The object will reach a magnitude of 11 which would make it in principle observable with a pair of binoculars or a small telescope. Unfortunately the object will not be visible over Europe.
This object is comparable in size to the object that entered the Earth's atmosphere over Chelyabinsk in Russia on 15 February 2013. Luckily it
will fly by our planet safely.