Two age ago , an unusually bright shooting star – in argot a fireball – burn in the sky over the Niagara region . Just minute before , researchers had determined that this asteroid was going to hit our major planet . Data from the object in space and as it fire through the standard atmosphere have allowed it to be characterized , and it is the smallest asteroid on track record .
Asteroid 2022 WJ1 made first and final contact with our major planet onNovember 19 , 2022 . It is now forecast to be an southward - chondrite , a class of stony asteroid among the old consistency in the Solar System . They are the most common eccentric of meteorite on Earth . What ’s platter - breakage is its size of it . Estimated to be 40 to 60 centimeters ( 16 to 27 inches ) in diam , WJ1 is the smallest experience asteroid .
“ This is only the sixth asteroid attain before encroachment , ” cobalt - source Professor Denis Vida , from Western University , say in astatement . “ Our new approach , find an asteroid through infinite observation and then subsequently observing it with cameras from the ground , allowed us to sustain that our estimate rival well to estimates derived using a wholly different approach . ”
The NASA - fundedCatalina Sky Surveydiscovered the asteroid on November 18 , 2022 . Seven minutes afterwards , NASA ’s Scout know that there was a one in four fortune that it would impact somewhere between Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of North America . Telescopes bulge to look for it , refining its celestial orbit and allowing astronomers to know where it was pass to hit .
“ This is only the second time that an asteroid has been meaningfully characterized with telescopes prior to it affect the Earth , ” say lead source Teddy Kareta , a postdoctoral associate at Lowell Observatory .
“ It ’s a will to our good luck and readiness , but it ’s also due to the community of interests that deal about keeping the Earth good from these impactors find out to work together comfortably . ”
The size of the asteroid was shape by the Lowell Discovery Telescope ( LDT ) in Arizona and it was tracked over the sky of Canada by Western ’s Southern Ontario Meteor connection camera .
“ It ’s hugely fortuitous that this asteroid happened to fly over Arizona ’s dark skies at Nox before burning up over Western ’s first-class photographic camera web . It ’s arduous to imagine good circumstance to do this kind of research , ” added Kareta .
The early alert serendipitously reached westerly physic and astronomy professor Paul Wiegert ( who is a carbon monoxide gas - author on the study ) so that he could go and watch the fireball take flight above his house at 3:30 in the morning .
“ I watch from Brescia Hill on the westerly campus . Though cold and windy , the hill had a clear view to the east , where I require to see only a distant flash . Then the fireball suddenly appear , exceed almost overhead . It was easily seeable between disordered cloud and noticeably orange - crimson , ” Wiegert said .
Unlike other forebode impacts , like the more recentone over Berlin , no fragments of 2022 WJ1 have been recovered .
A paper discussing the answer is publish inThe Planetary Science Journal .
