Close Encounters of the Asteroid Kind

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What I look for is clusters of close Asteroid approaches. Many of these are small asteroids or comet fragments. When a pattern develops then it indicates to me that a few more might be out there that are unseen and that one of these unseen fragments may collide with Earth.

Such is the case at the moment. Three asteroids 2020TG6, 2020TE6, and 2020TF6 have suddenly appeared with close encounters with Earth (< 1 lunar distance) with closest approaches between 17-19 October. These are all small, one is estimated to be 6 meters (20 feet) diameter and the other two 11 meters (36 feet).

Stay tuned!

And now there are 6 in this cluster. Add in 2020UX, 2020UA and 2020UY to the list. The last two will have their closest approach on 21 October. 2020UA will miss earth by only 0.1 lunar distances, so its a close one.

Hmmm! I wonder if these asteroids are part of the debris field left behind by the disintegration of Halley's Comet. This is the source of the annual Orionid meteor shower. The shower peaks on 21 October.

What is todays date?

Well it kind of depends on where you live. Since you posted this yesterday, the date was 19 October at that time. So currently your date is now 20 October, because it took me awhile to respond.

Add two more to this cluster. 2020UO3 and 2020UF3. The later has a miss distance of 0.1 LD which is a rather close miss distance. That brings the total for this cluster up to 8.

What is with this phenomena?

It is possibly the debris from a comet. Many comets come from the Oort Cloud. They can be very large, 100 miles across. As they approach the inner solar system, the warm of the sun causes the frozen gases to warm up and they eject a stream of debris. Over many passes, this stream can extend for millions of miles. Some of this debris will be small like a grain of sand, while others can be significantly larger. A grain of sand hitting the upper atmosphere at high speeds become what is known as shooting stars. Sometimes these breakups can produce very large pieces.

Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 was a comet that broke apart in July 1992 and collided with Jupiter in July 1994. Calculations showed that its unusual fragmented form was due to a previous closer approach to Jupiter in July 1992. At that time, the orbit of Shoemaker–Levy 9 passed within Jupiter's Roche limit, and Jupiter's tidal forces had acted to pull apart the comet. The comet was later observed as a series of fragments ranging up to 2 km (1.2 mi) in diameter. These fragments collided with Jupiter's southern hemisphere between July 16 and 22, 1994 at a speed of approximately 60 km/s (37 mi/s).