This asteroid, which recently sped past Earth, has caught the attention of NASA astronomers for its bizarre long shape. The space rock — which has perhaps whizzed by to set the record straight that not all asteroids are vaguely ball-like — is more than three times as long as it is wide.
To get a sense of its scale, scientists have estimated the rock is about 1,600-by-500 feet, roughly comparable to that of the world-famous landmark that looms over 100 stories above New York.
"Of the 1,040 near-Earth objects observed by planetary radar to date, this is one of the most elongated we’ve seen," said Lance Benner, principal scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in a statement.
The asteroid, known as 2011 AG5, zipped past Earth at a safe distance of 1.1 million miles away on Feb. 3, according to the U.S. space agency. But that approach gave astronomers their first crack at studying its size, rotation, surface, and silhouette in detail since the object was discovered 12 years ago.
It takes the asteroid about twice as long to orbit the sun as Earth and won’t have a near flyby with this planet until 2040, when it could come within 670,000 miles, according to NASA. That's close in terms of the cosmos — space, after all, is a big place — but it's still three times farther than the moon is to Earth.
NASA discovers asteroid is a dead ringer for the Empire State Building
To get a sense of its scale, scientists have estimated the rock is about 1,600-by-500 feet, roughly comparable to that of the world-famous landmark that looms over 100 stories above New York.
"Of the 1,040 near-Earth objects observed by planetary radar to date, this is one of the most elongated we’ve seen," said Lance Benner, principal scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in a statement.
The asteroid, known as 2011 AG5, zipped past Earth at a safe distance of 1.1 million miles away on Feb. 3, according to the U.S. space agency. But that approach gave astronomers their first crack at studying its size, rotation, surface, and silhouette in detail since the object was discovered 12 years ago.
"This is one of the most elongated [asteroids] we’ve seen."The image above is a collage of six pictures taken of the long object by the Goldstone Solar System Radar antenna dish in California. There were no signs of King Kong clinging to the towering rock, but astronomers did make a few other observations: It has a dark charcoal color, appears to be scooped on one side, and is slowly spinning around every nine hours.
It takes the asteroid about twice as long to orbit the sun as Earth and won’t have a near flyby with this planet until 2040, when it could come within 670,000 miles, according to NASA. That's close in terms of the cosmos — space, after all, is a big place — but it's still three times farther than the moon is to Earth.
NASA discovers asteroid is a dead ringer for the Empire State Building
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