Quote from frankuitaalst on 01/04/09 at 03:31:48:Maybe an early gift of 2009 :
On 02/01/2009 this really big asteroid was discovered . It ranks highest in Palermo scale among the newly discovered ones with an estimated diameter of about 900 meters .
http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=2009+AV;orb=1.
The orbital parameters still show a lot of sigma ( sma = 0.88 +/- 0.14sigma) after only 10 observations .
Remarkable is the fact that 2009AV must have been closer to earth in the past years , so it's a mystery to me why this one hasn't been discovered earlier ...
The animation herunder shows the most likely orbit in rotating frame to Earth . Animation starts at 01/02/2007.
The green dot in the last picture shows the approximate location of 2009AV at the time of discovery .
As more observations will become available I'll try to update if necessary .
New observations of the asteroid solve the mystery why it wasn't detected earlier : the initial orbit has changed dramatically in this sense the asteroid actually moves slower than Earth and is approaching ...
The danger for a collission seems to be gone with a MOID of 0.02AU .
Herunder is an animation of the path of the asteroid in rotating frame to Earth . The fisrt part is a top view , the second part shows a side view. The "old" orbit is in grey , the newly calculated orbit is shown in white ...