2009 DD45 - Latest Near Earth Asteroid
3 March, 2009
On March 2nd, 2009, a Near Earth Asteroid (NEA), named 2009 DD45, passed close to the Earth for the first observable time. And by close - it was very close, less than a fifth of the distance to the moon!. It is believed to of a similar size to the asteroid that crashed into Tunguska, Siberia, a hundred years ago.
Despite the numerous NEA searches being conducted, DD45 has not been seen before, and was only reported a few days earlier by the Australian Siding Spring Survey. The Siding Spring Survey is a Near-Earth Object search program that uses the 0.5-m Uppsala Schmidt Telescope at Siding Spring Observatory, N.S.W., Australia. The Northern hemisphere counterpart is the Catalina Sky Survey located in the Santa Catalina Mountains on Mt Bigelow, near Tucson, Arizona, USA. Siding Spring is jointly operated by the University of Arizona and the Australian National University, with funding from NASA.
The team had made 9 observations on the nights of February 27th and 28th. After analysis, it was calculated that the asteroid would pass the Earth at a distance of between 45, 000 and 80,000 miles, on March 2nd at about 13:30 UT. Using it's magnitude, they calculated its size to be about 50m. Perhaps more surprisingly, they estimate it's orbit around the sun to be only about 1.5 years, meaning it has probably passed close to us before and was never spotted. This means it may well do again, presenting a possible danger of impacting.
Over the night of the 2nd, many astronomers looked to take astrometry readings, to define more accurately DD45's orbital path. One observer, Dave Herald, filmed the video above. Using a 14" scope and a 3x focal reducer, Dave captured a series of images using a Watec 120N+ integrating video camera, and compiled these together to produce the video. If you look carefully, you can see one of the points of light move across the image. It is very rare to see any natural object move so quickly even more so when you consider the video is in real-time.
The results from these observations will be pooled together, and help astronomers refine the orbital elements. Hopefully, DD45 won't be making the headlines for the wrong reasons.
