Discovery date 25 October 2011 Discovered 25 October 2011 Absolute magnitude 19.9 | MPC designation (436724) 2011 UW158 Observation arc 1477 days (4.04 yr) Earth moid 0.4 cm | |
Discovered by Pan-STARRS at Haleakala (F51) Aphelion 2.2299 AU (333.59 Gm) (Q) Pan-STARRS discoveries 2012 TC4, 2015 TB145, (469219) 2016 HO3, C/2011 L4 |
The near earth object 436724 2011 uw158 on 2015 07 09
(436724) 2011 UW158, provisionally known as 2011 UW158, is an Apollo near-Earth asteroid and potentially hazardous object. It was discovered in 2011 from the Pan-STARRS observatory at Haleakala, Hawaii, U.S.A.
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The asteroid was listed as level 1 in the Torino Scale on 4 November 2011, 9 days after its discovery, but was removed two weeks later.
On 19 July 2015, it passed about 2.5 million kilometers from Earth, attracting the interest of astronomers. It has an unusually short rotation period of 37 minutes, suggesting it is a large boulder rather than a rubble pile. It also attracted the media and even by firms such as Planetary Resources for its alleged content of precious metals worth as high as 5 trillion U.S. dollars. Users at Space Exploration StackExchange have denied these estimations as being orders of magnitude too high.