Celestia files for Near Earth Asteroid 2015 TB145

Asteroid 2015 TB145 will come within 1.3 Earth Moon distances of Earth  on October 31. Despite being somewhere between 280–620 meters in diameter, it will be visible in small amateur instruments at closest approach, although North America will have the best view.  The asteroid is a target for mapping with radar.

For those of us not in North America (or who just want to play around with the asteroid orbit, or who want to argue with people who claim this asteroid will hit us (it won’t)) I’ve made Celestia files for 2015 TB145.  As usual, copy the data here to a plain text file (2015TB145.ssc) and copy the file to the Celestia extras folder.

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"2015 TB145" "Sol"

#Data from MPC http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/MPEph/MPEph.html
#Epoch 2016 Jan. 13.0 TT = JDT 2457400.5 MPC
#M 10.48189 (2000.0) P Q
#n 0.32423068 Peri. 121.69708 -0.81665165 -0.42486171 T = 2457368.17150 JDT
#a 2.0984565 Node 37.76023 -0.03578994 -0.63822119 q = 0.2938239
#e 0.8599809 Incl. 39.63322 +0.57602011 -0.64200175 Earth MOID = 0.00157 AU
#P 3.04 H 19.8 G 0.15 U 8
#From 62 observations 2015 Oct. 10-15, mean residual 0".36.

{
 Class "asteroid"
 Mesh "ky26.cmod"
 Texture "asteroid.jpg"
 Radius 0.15 # maximum semi-axis
 MeshCenter [ -0.000718 -0.000099 0.000556 ]

 EllipticalOrbit
 {
 Epoch 2457400.5 # Epoch 2016 Jan. 13.0 TT = JDT 2457400.5
 Period 3.04 # P
 SemiMajorAxis 2.0984565 # a
 Eccentricity 0.8599809 # e
 Inclination 39.63322 # Incl.
 AscendingNode 37.76023 # Node
 ArgOfPericenter 121.69708 # Peri
 PericenterDistance 0.2938239 # q
 MeanAnomaly 10.48189 # M
 }

 RotationPeriod 0.9 #Guess

 Albedo 0.15 #Based on typical Stony asteroids, rotation periods vary from one hour to one day

}

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