Travelers In The Night

During a recent 6 night observing run with the NASA funded Catalina Sky Survey 60 inch telescope on Mt. Lemmon, I found 29 Earth Approaching Asteroid candidates which were posted on the Minor Planet Center website. The largest of this collection of space rocks is 2014 JO25. It orbits the Sun every 3 years and is about 1/2 mile in diameter. Its closet approach to Earth is about 4.4 times the distance to our Moon at which time it is traveling in excess of 20 miles/second. We will continue to observe it, to make sure that it does not become an Earth impactor, as it passes near other objects in space.