Giant Asteroid Heading Toward Earth

Credit: Wikipedia

If you have a telescope you might want to get it ready.A huge asteroid 3 miles wide, half the size of the one that took out the dinosaurs will pass by earth tomorrow morning .The asteroid  4179 Toutatis was first spotted in 1934 but wasn’t officially recognized until 1989. Every 4 years it makes a trip around the sun.Continued below. 

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Asteroid Flyby Tonight: How To Watch 4179 Toutatis Pass Earth

By: Mike Wall
Published: 12/11/2012 09:15 AM EST on SPACE.com

A giant asteroid will make a flyby of Earth over the next few days, and armchair astronomers can watch the action live on their computers.

The near-Earth asteroid 4179 Toutatis, which is about 3 miles (5 kilometers) wide, will zoom within 4.3 million miles (7 million kilometers) of Earth during its closest approach early Wednesday morning (Dec. 12). That’s too far away to pose any impact threat on this pass, but close enough to put on a pretty good show through top-notch telescopes, researchers say.

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4179 Toutatis/1989 AC ( /tuːˈtɑːtɨs/ too-TAH-tis) is an Apollo, Alinda, and Mars-crosser asteroid with a chaotic orbit produced by a 3:1 resonance with the planet Jupiter, a 1:4 resonance with the planet Earth, and frequent close approaches to the terrestrial planets, including Earth.^[4] It is listed as a potentially hazardous object,^[5] although the odds of a collision with the Earth are very small.^[6]

On December 12, 2012 it is predicted to come with about 18 lunar distances of the Earth.[7]

On December 13, 2012, the Chinese lunar probe Chang’e 2, which was launched on Oct. 1, 2010 and which has successfully completed its lunar mission and now on its extended mission, is expected to make a flyby of Toutatis at a distance of a few hundred kilometers and at a relative velocity of 10.7 km/s, when Toutatis is near closest approach to the Earth.[8

4179 Toutatis was first sighted on February 10, 1934, as object 1934 CT, and then promptly lost. It remained a lost asteroid for several decades until it was discovered on January 4, 1989, by Christian Pollas, and was named after the Celtic god Toutatis/Teutates.

The spectral properties suggest that this is an S-type, or stony asteroid, consisting primarily of silicates. It has a moderately bright Bond albedo of 0.13.[1] Radar imagery shows that Toutatis is a highly irregular body consisting of two distinct “lobes”, with maximum widths of about 4.6 km and 2.4 km respectively. It is hypothesized that Toutatis formed from two originally separate bodies which coalesced at some point, with the resultant asteroid being compared to a “rubble pile“.

Its rotation combines two separate periodic motions into a non-periodic result; to someone on the surface of Toutatis, the Sun would seem to rise and set in apparently random locations and at random times at the asteroid’s horizon. It has a rotation period around its long axis (Pψ) of 5.38 days. This long axis is precessing with a period (Pφ) of 7.38 days.[9] The asteroid may have lost most of its original angular momentum and entered into this tumbling motion as a result of the YORP effect.[10]

 Orbit

With a semimajor axis of 2.5294 AU, or roughly 2.5 times the separation of the Earth from the Sun, Toutatis has a 3:1 orbital resonance with Jupiter and a near-1:4 resonance with Earth.[4][11] Thus it completes one orbit around the Sun for every 4.02 annual orbits of the Earth. The gravitational perturbations caused by frequent close approaches to the terrestrial planets lead to chaotic behaviour in the orbit of Toutatis,[12] making precise long-term predictions of its location progressively inaccurate over time.[12] Estimates in 1993 put the Lyapunov time horizon for predictability at around 50 years,[12] after which the uncertainty region becomes larger with each close approach to a planet. Without the perturbations from the terrestrial planets the Lyapunov time would be close to 10,000 years.[12] The initial observations which showed its chaotic behaviour were made by Wiśniewski.[13]

The low inclination (0.47°) of the orbit allows frequent transits, where the inner planets Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars can appear to cross the Sun as seen from the perspective of the asteroid. Earth did this in January 2009 and July 2012, and will also do it in July 2016 and 2020.[14]

 Close approaches and collision risk

Toutatis makes frequent close approaches to Earth, with a currently minimum possible distance (Earth MOID) of just 0.006 AU (2.3 times as far as the Moon).[1] The approach on September 29, 2004, was particularly close, at 0.0104 AU[15] (within 4 lunar distances) from Earth, presenting a good opportunity for observation, with Toutatis shining at magnitude 8.8 when brightest.[2] A more recent close approach of 0.0502 AU (7,510,000 km; 4,670,000 mi) happened on November 9, 2008.[5][15] The next close approach will be December 12, 2012, at a distance of 0.046 AU (6,900,000 km; 4,300,000 mi),[5][15] and at magnitude 10.7.[16] At magnitude 10.7, the asteroid will not be visible to the naked eye, but may be visible to experienced observers using high-end binoculars. Toutatis was recovered on May 21, 2012, by the Siding Spring Survey at apparent magnitude 18.9.[17]

Given that Toutatis makes many close approaches the Earth, such as in 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004, 2008, and 2012, it is listed as a potentially hazardous object.[5] With an uncertainty parameter of 0,[1] the orbit of Toutatis is very well determined for the next few hundred years.[5] The probability of the orbit intersecting Earth is essentially zero for at least the next six centuries.[18] The likelihood of collision in the distant future is considered to be very small.[6] As a planet-crossing asteroid, Toutatis is likely to be ejected from the inner Solar System with a time scale of a few million years or less, giving it a limited number of opportunities to strike Earth before disappearing forever. As with many near-Earth objects, Toutatis was in 2004 the object for fear mongering by some doomsayers.[19]

Exploration

Toutatis has been observed with radar imaging from the Arecibo Observatory and the Goldstone Solar System Radar during the asteroid’s prior Earth flybys in 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004, and 2008. It will also be observed with radar during the December 2012 flyby and potentially during the more distant flyby in 2016.^[20] After 2016, Toutatis will not pass close to Earth again until 2069. The resolution of the radar images is as fine as 7.5 m, providing a very detailed model of Toutatis’ shape and spin state.

The Chinese lunar probe Chang’e 2 departed from the Sun–Earth L2 point on April 15, 2012 and is en route to the asteroid. The spacecraft is expected to make a flyby of Toutatis on December 13, 2012, at a distance of a few hundred kilometers and at a relative velocity of 10.7 km/s, when Toutatis is near closest approach to the Earth.^[21][22]

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