is a near-Earth

Apollo asteroid The Apollo asteroids are a group of near-Earth asteroids named after 1862 Apollo, discovered by German astronomer Karl Reinmuth in the 1930s. They are Earth-crossing asteroids that have an orbital semi-major axis greater than that of the Earth ...

that passed from Earth on 11 December 2013. It passed by Earth at about 2 lunar distances, and was discovered 5 days previously, on 7 December 2013. At across it is bigger than the estimated size of the

Chelyabinsk meteor The Chelyabinsk meteor was a superbolide that entered Earth's atmosphere over the southern Ural (region), Ural region in Russia on 15 February 2013 at about 09:20 Yekaterinburg Time, YEKT (03:20 Coordinated Universal Time, UTC). It was caused ...

impact of 2013. has been observed by

radar Radar is a detection system that uses radio waves to determine the distance (''ranging''), angle, and radial velocity of objects relative to the site. It can be used to detect aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, w ...

and has a well determined orbit. It will pass about from the Moon on 11 December 2095. 2013 XY8 was detected by the

Catalina Sky Survey Catalina Sky Survey (CSS; obs. code: 703) is an astronomical survey to discover comets and asteroids. It is conducted at the Steward Observatory's Catalina Station, located near Tucson, Arizona, in the United States. CSS focuses on the search ...

and follow up observations were conducted with the Faulkes Telescope South . It was described as being about the size of the

Space Shuttle The Space Shuttle is a retired, partially reusable low Earth orbital spacecraft system operated from 1981 to 2011 by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as part of the Space Shuttle program. Its official program na ...

and was reported to be traveling at 14 kilometers per second (over 31 thousand miles per hour) relative to the Earth. 2013 XY8 was noted for being analogous to

101955 Bennu 101955 Bennu (provisional designation ) is a carbonaceous asteroid in the Apollo group discovered by the LINEAR Project on 11 September 1999. It is a potentially hazardous object that is listed on the Sentry Risk Table and has the highest cumula ...

.Target Asteroids! List of Near Earth Asteroids and Asteroids Analogous to (101955) Bennu
/ref>

Observations

2013 XY8 was imaged by the

Faulkes Telescope South The Faulkes Telescope South is a clone of the Liverpool Telescope and is located at Siding Spring Observatory in New South Wales, Australia. It is a Ritchey-Chrétien telescope. It was designed to be operated remotely with the aim of encourag ...

References

External links

N. Atkinson - "Space Shuttle-Sized Asteroid 2013 XY8 to Fly Past Earth on Dec. 11"

* {{DEFAULTSORT:2013 XY8 # Minor planet object articles (unnumbered) # # # 20131211

Observations

References

See also

External links