Two asteroids zipped by the Earth's hours before someone noticed

They sneaked almost undetected, but two small asteroids were discovered over the weekend hours after they had strayed about 72,000 miles, about a third of the distance to the moon.

Asteroids 2018 NX and 2018 NW On Sunday, they were first sighted by the Palomar Observatory, Southern California, while they were passing in front of our neighborhood to get into the town. other parts of the solar system.

It is estimated that each of the space rocks is about the size of a school bus of a diameter of about 10 meters (33 feet), but they do not seem not traveling together. That's because 2018 NW was observed traveling at a speed of 21.3 km / s (47.647 mph), or about five times faster than 2018 NX.

No asteroid threatened us, and they had nothing to do with fireball that people across the central United States saw on Sunday night .

In fact, an asteroid passes harmlessly at a distance from us closer than the moon every few weeks. It is interesting and rare to see a pair getting so close to each other.

A number of these asteroids are discovered for the first time in our cosmic mirror, after they have already passed through the closest approach point to the Earth, as it was the case with this pair. This is often due to the small size and relative darkness of many asteroids: they are hard to spot until they are really close.

Last month, the tiny asteroid 2018 LA was discovered just before it slammed into the atmosphere . Fragments of the resulting meteorite were recovered later in Botswana .

As always, head high!

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