11/19/2021 – Ephemeris – The Earth is being stalked by an asteroid

This is Bob Moler with Ephemeris for Friday, November 19th. Today the Sun will be up for 9 hours and 25 minutes, setting at 5:10, and it will rise tomorrow at 7:46. The Moon, at full today, will rise at 5:23 this evening.

We’re being stalked by an asteroid. Its name is, and I’m not going to say it twice: Kamo`oalewa or 2016 HO3 for short. It was discovered with the Pan-STARRS telescope at Haleakala on Maui on April 27, 2016. Which explains the name. It’s Hawaiian for something that oscillates. It’ll make big circles in the evening sky for a while, then it will retreat while the Earth moves ahead of it and almost overtakes it. It will oscillate in the morning sky for a while, I mean years. Then it will head around the Earth’s orbit and go back to the evening or trailing part of the orbit and the sky and do it all over. It never seems to get closer than 5 million miles away. Some astronomers think it might be a chunk of the Moon blasted off by an asteroid impact.

The astronomical event times given are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan (EST, UT – 5 hours). They may be different for your location.

Addendum

Kamo`oalewa (2016 HO3) orbit around the Sun, and shows how it interacts with the Earth. Credit: NASA/JPL.

Check out all the weirdness that is Kamo’oalewa here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/469219_Kamo’oalewa.