© Ernesto Guido & Giovanni Sostero2010 AL30 as imaged remotely from Australia on Jan. 11, 2010
On Wednesday (Jan. 13), an object called
2010 AL30 will fly by Earth at a distance of 130,000 km (80,000 miles). That's only one-third of the way from here to the moon.
Astronomers will be able to observe it shining with a brightness of a 14th magnitude star as it dashes through the constellations of Orion, Taurus, and Pisces (further details about the orbit of 2010 AL30 can be found on
NASA's Solar System Dynamics website).
This small object is cataloged as a 10 meter-wide asteroid and there's no chance it will impact Earth, but it does provide astronomers with an interesting opportunity.
What makes this near-Earth object (NEO) special is that it has an orbital period of almost exactly one year. This fact has led some scientists to speculate that 2010 AL30 could be a man made object and not an asteroid. After all, there's a lot of space junk up there, there's every possibility that it could be a spent rocket booster or some other spacecraft artifact.
But it could just be coincidence that the NEO has the same orbital period as Earth and that it's just another asteroid.