Aphelion 3.1343 AU (468.88 Gm) Discovered 11 October 2007 Argument of perihelion 334.254° Asteroid group Apollo asteroid | Discovery date October 11, 2007 Observation arc 1093 days (2.99 yr) Semi-major axis 2.0429 AU (305.61 Gm) Inclination 5.6232° Mean anomaly 267.95° | |
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Similar Solar System, 2009 DD45, 2007 WD5, 2004 XP14, (308635) 2005 YU55 | ||
Asteroid 2007 tu24 close approach
2007 TU24 is an Apollo near-Earth asteroid that was discovered by the Catalina Sky Survey in Arizona on October 11, 2007. Imaging radar has estimated that it is 250 meters (820 ft) in diameter. The asteroid passed 554,209 kilometer (344,370 mile or 1.4-lunar distance) from Earth on January 29, 2008, at 08:33 UTC. (At the time of the passage it was believed the closest for any known potentially hazardous asteroid (PHA) of this size before 2027, but in 2010 2005 YU55 was measured to be 400 meters in diameter.) At closest approach the asteroid had an apparent magnitude of 10.3 and was about 50 times fainter than the naked eye can see. It required about a 3-inch (76 mm) telescope to be seen.
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Asteroid 2007 tu24 close approach
Impact risk assessment
From the date of discovery of asteroid 2007 TU24 on 11 October 2007, a total of 316 observations of it had been made by 31 January 2008, spanning 112 days. Now the asteroid has an observation arc of about 3 years and the trajectory is well defined. It was removed from the Sentry Risk Table on 4 December 2007 at 14:05 UTC.
2008 passage
Goldstone Observatory carried out radar observations on January 23 and January 24, 2008. As of January 24, the orbit of the asteroid was known with such a high precision that scientists were able to calculate close approaches from the year 67 AD to 2141 AD. On January 29, 2008 at 08:33 UTC, 2007 TU24 passed by the earth at a nominal distance of 0.0037043 AU (554,160 km; 344,340 mi) with a relative speed of 9.248 km/s.
Observations from Arecibo Observatory were taken on February 1–4. It is a contact binary asteroid.