Massive, kilometer-sized asteroid was just found orbiting the Sun

[Makuser]

A newly found asteroid has been spotted orbiting the Sun, whizzing past the star every 151 days, the shortest orbit of any space rock on record. Known as 2019 LF6, this asteroid is quite large, at 1 kilometer (0.6 miles) across and is part of the "Atira" asteroid group, 20 space rocks whose orbits fall entirely within Earth's. "LF6 is very unusual both in orbit and in size—its unique orbit explains why such a large asteroid eluded several decades of careful searches," He added; "We only have about 20 to 30 minutes before sunrise or after sunset to find these asteroids." One other Atira asteroid has been discovered by the ZTF team, 2019 AQ3, which orbits the Sun approximately once every 165 days. You can read more about this and see an interesting orbital map from Cal Tech here, at:
https://www.foxnews.com/science/asteroid-orbiting-sun

[KingNothing13]

Huh, that's interesting. I wonder how related to each other these "Atira" asteroids are. I'd never heard of them until this article - so maybe someone else here would know - are they remnants of the same object, etc.

[helicon]

Quite fascinating Marshall and a reminder that we have to keep a close watch on the asteroids exhibiting orbital eccentricity. The fact that it crosses earth's orbit is a bit worrying and I don't know that we have the wherewithal yet to prevent such objects from potentially impacting our planet. In other words, can we pull off what was done in the old film Armageddon?

[Makuser]

Hi Brett and Michael. The old astronomers, when they were cataloging the main asteroid belt, wondered for decades if these were the remnants of a planet that never coalesced. If not, why not. Or was it hit by an object from outside of the solar system. This would account for many of the craters found on our neighbors. And, the tangentially close to the main orbit planet ejecta trajectories would account for the outliers in their orbits to the main asteroid belt, which were still attracted to our Sun's gravitational pull. And, spectrographic analysis from our space probes is only partly useful. Many of these "space rocks" are mostly icy rocks which could have been from the surface, while many others contain iron, nickle, and manganese, which could have been from the core. I have been fascinated with this study myself for a long time. You have a great question Brett, and like all science, opens the door to even more questions. And Michael, check out this great movie too here, at:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteor_(film)
Thanks for your replies folks, and the best of regards.