Astronomers eager to observe bizarre visitors to our neck of the Solar System were in for a real treat late last month as the rare double asteroid 1999 KW4 made a “close” pass of Earth at a distance of some 3.2 million miles. It was far enough away that the space rock didn’t have a chance of posing a threat to our planet, but it was close enough that scientists were able to catch a glimpse of the special visitor.
Asteroid 1999 KW4 isn’t like many of the other space rocks that speed past our planet on their way around the Sun. Rather than a single large object, 1999 KW4 is actually two separate rocks; a large main body that measures roughly a mile across and a smaller “asteroid moon” that orbits it.
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Astronomers captured an image of a double asteroid as it sped past Earth originally appeared on BGR.com on Tue, 4 Jun 2019 at 17:06:02 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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