NASA experts have published pictures of the asteroid Phaethon

2017-12-24 10:54

NASA experts have published pictures of the asteroid Phaethon
The diameter of the asteroid is six miles.

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The Arecibo Observatory, which was closed due to threats caused by hurricane Maria, fully resumed its work and has enabled researchers to obtain images of near-earth asteroid Phaethon, reports Rus.Media. As reported on the website NASA, the images were obtained during a convergence of the celestial body with the Earth in December of this year.

The new observations allowed to establish that the Phaeton looks like the asteroid Bennu. Diameter of a celestial body is six kilometers per kilometer more than researchers previously thought. The Phaeton is the second largest near-earth asteroid that entered in the list of potential threats”, that is, a collision with them may cause significant damage to our planet.

The Phaeton was open on 11 October 1983. The dust is what causes a meteor stream, Geminid formed this asteroid.

Previously, scientists have said that potentially dangerous for the Earth asteroids are invisible to ground-based telescopes. To such conclusions researchers came after analyzing the data of the detections of near-earth objects to several observatories.