Asteroid buzzes RP skies

ANGELES CITY, Philippines – Filipino astronomers said an asteroid buzzed close to earth last Monday at a distance less than twice that of the many telecommunications satellites orbiting over the earth, or one-seventh of the way to the moon.

Astronomer Dario de la Cruz of the astronomical observatory of the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA) told The STAR that the asteroid seemed to be one of many such objects found near earth.

The object, estimated to be around 35-60 meters wide, was about the size of the dead comet shard that exploded with the force of a large hydrogen bomb over a then largely uninhabited region of central Siberia on June 30, 1908.

However, De la Cruz said no alarm was issued on the approach of the asteroid, which was found to be nearing earth only three days earlier. It zoomed past the Pacific area at an altitude of 40,000 miles at 1:44 p.m. universal time.

Dubbed 2009 DD45, the asteroid was discovered last Friday by Australian comet hunter Rob McNaught.

News about his discovery came out in the Australian website Crikey.

According to the website, had the asteroid hit the earth, “it would have exploded on or near the surface with the force of a large nuclear blast.”

The Australian news website said the same asteroid might return for many more near misses in the future. “It will be a future danger to the planet,” it added.

“For the astronomers working on the Siding Spring Survey of potentially dangerous near-earth objects or NEOs the closeness of the approach will allow more accurate predictions of future visits by this intruder, which is big enough to incinerate a large city if it hits

Earth or, as is more likely, turns into a Tunguska-like fireball on hitting the atmosphere at a closing velocity of tens of kilometers per second,” the website said.

The Tunguska Event, or Tunguska explosion, was a powerful explosion that occurred near the Podkamennaya (Lower Stony) Tunguska River in what is now Krasnoyarsk Krai of Russia, at around 7:14 a.m. on June 30, 1908.

The explosion was most likely to have been caused by the airburst of a large meteoroid or comet fragment at an altitude of 5–10 kilometers above the Earth’s surface.

The object’s actual size had not been known but the general agreement is that it was tens of meters across.

De la Cruz also cited one report submitted by Jose Mendoza IV of the astronomy research and development section of PAGASA citing a much larger earth-crossing asteroid called Apophis, which is expected to pass even closer to earth on April 13, 2029.

Some astronomers said that this asteroid may “suffer enough gravitational deflection to subsequently collide with us on 13 April 2036.”