A Monster Asteroid Bigger Than The UK Is Now So Close To Earth That It’s Visible To The Naked Eye

A gigantic asteroid with a surface area four times bigger than the UK has drawn close enough to our planet that it’s now visible without a telescope. The space rock 4 Vesta, which is the fourth largest known asteroid in the solar system, will light up the night sky until July 16.

It recently came within 106 million miles of Earth – the closest it has reached us for 20 years. Vesta’s total surface area is 800,000 km², which is roughly the same as the country in South Asia, Pakistan, and a lot bigger than the United Kingdom, which covers 242,495 km².

The space rock is named Vesta after the goddess of the hearth and household in Roman mythology. It’s famous for a 13-mile-high mountain at its north pole that’s one of the tallest peaks humanity has ever discovered. Vesta is also one of the easiest to see because it has a surface which reflects more light than the moon. It will be visible as a yellowish dot in the sky. To get the best view, you should use binoculars or a telescope.

If Vesta hit Earth, it would wipe out most life on the planet. To get a sense of the damage it would cause, just consider that the space rock which killed the dinosaurs was between 10 to 15 kilometres wide, whilst Vesta is about 525 kilometres wide. Luckily, it’s not on a collision course with us and Nasa recently said no other asteroids are heading our way either.

NASA has recently issued a statement about this massive asteroid to clear out few things. Here’s what NASA has written about Vesta: ‘Vesta has one of the largest brightness ranges observed on any rocky body in our solar system. The bright materials appear to be native rocks, while the dark material is believed to have been deposited by other asteroids crashing into Vesta.

‘Scientists on the Dawn team estimate that about 300 dark asteroids with diameters ranging from one to 10 km (0.6 to six miles) hit Vesta during the last 3.5 billion years. This would have been enough to wrap the Vesta in a blanket of material about three to seven feet (one to two meters) thick.

‘An extensive system of troughs encircles Vesta’s equatorial region. The largest, named Divalia Fossa, is bigger than the Grand Canyon.’

Tom

Related Posts

Flat-Earther Offered $100K To Prove Earth Was Round, Now Regrets It

One YouTuber – Wolfie6020, who is a professional pilot, successfully completed a $100,000 challenge thrown out by a Flat Earther called Flat Out Hero. However the flat-earther…

A substance that can “remember” its entire past like a brain is discovered by scientists

Scientists have discovered the first-ever physical material capable of “remembering” its entire history of physical stimuli, similar to that of a brain. The team from the École…

Two Earth-like Planets Discovered in Habitable Zone

Two Earth-like planets have been discovered by astronomers in the habitable zone of their planetary system less than sixteen light-years away from Earth. A solar system’s habitable…

Comet Last Seen by the Neanderthals Approaches Earth

A comet last seen by the Neanderthals is approaching Earth and could be seen by the naked eye sometime at the end of January and the beginning…

Satellites Are Falling Out Of Their Orbits At Alarmingly High Rate And Sun Is To Blame

It is a well-known fact that satellites in near orbit above Earth are susceptible to the residual atmosphere’s drag, which progressively slows the spacecraft and finally causes…

The 1,000-light-year-wide cosmic bubble around Earth

We are in the middle of a bubble of stars being made by the Milky Way. As this artist’s concept shows, the Local bubble is driving the…

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *