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This Apollo class rock from space discovered March of 2018 at Pan-STARRS makes a pass over the top at a distance of 2.7LD at mag 16.1. This is on the evening of Sept 25, ripping at 4 arc minutes per minute out of Cepheus, through Andromeda and into Pegasus b4 morning twilight on the 26th. It brightens somewhat to mag 15.5 as the phase angle improves b4 morning twilight ruins the view.
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Neither CNEOS nor the MPC list a close approach by this object on their websites in September 2022. Interestingly the CNEOS's Orbit Viewer shows this NEO approaching within 0.061 AU on 2022 Sep 29. Their table of close approaches shows nothing in 2022. I've seen this happen with other objects. With H=24.7 it's unlikely to be 16.1 magnitude.
I've had many objects turn up in ST4v DB Power Searches that weren't on the CNEOS & MPC websites. Some objects like 2018 FE4 weren't in the close approach table, but the orbit viewer indicated that a close approach should have been expected. Frequently CNEOS was using an epoch of the elements around the time of discovery, but that doesn't explain why the MPC didn't indicate a close approach. They have elements calculated for today's date.
How did you find this one?
Phil S.
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The astro.vanbuitenen.nl site says that their elements come from the MPC. The MPC corrects for all of the planets & several of the larger MPs as well. There's a code for that on the page with the elements as you're probably aware.
Phil S.
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2022-09-21, 11:12 PM
(This post was last modified: 2022-09-21, 11:17 PM by bigmasterdrago.)
Phil, is that done in house via SkyTools? I think that's why it requires so much time on the PC to import and process the data file fetched from the MPC.
ST grabs the near earth file which is small (29,761 currently) and then only processes those to the current (daily) epoch. If I understand it correctly. It takes my PC much less time to grab the MPC NEA.