Sunday, May 17, 2015

The Two Ghosts, Identified

Got 'em!

This website is the key: minor planet checker


It allows me to plug in coordinates on the sky, and a timestamp, and say "Show me all known asteroids within a certain radius of that spot, at that time, that are brighter than a certain magnitude."

And it nailed my two little visitors.



2000 WM154 is a rock about 1.4 miles across.  It once got within about 2 million miles of Earth, in August of the year 1900.  Its apparent magnitude when this image was taken is 19.96 .

2000 WF151 is about 0.85 miles across, and it never comes within the orbit of Mars.  Apparent magnitude here is 19.53 .

The amazing part is that these two little guys, and great Philosophia, have nothing to do with each other!  A little while from now they will be nowhere near each other in the sky as seen from Earth.

Getting all three of them together in one shot like this is a tremendous stroke of luck.  This is a really valuable image.

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