look up! Asteroid 2026 JH2 is currently approaching Earth; an object approximately 20 meters (66 ft) in diameter, equivalent to the diameter of Chicago Cloud Gate sculpture – will pass on May 18. Lovers will be able to observe it through a telescope or during organized live broadcast via Virtual Telescope.
The object will pass at a minimum distance from Earth of about 90,000 km – much closer than the Moon, which is about four times farther away. The tracked near-Earth objects (NEOs) that will fly near the planet in the next few months include: closest.
There are tens of thousands of NEOs that are generally not of particular concern; are of course monitored, and some of them have a (tiny) risk of hitting Earth in the next few years. According to New scientist2026 JH2 is not among them, despite the widespread exploit of hyperbolic terms such as “grazing” to describe how close it will be.
Neo Apollo type
Asteroid 2026 JH2 Is technically Apollo-type NEOaccording to A classification a system that takes into account the characteristics of the object’s orbit. An Apollo-type object has a semi-major axis larger than Earth (and therefore greater than one astronomical unit, or the distance separating us from the Sun) and a perihelion (shortest distance from the Sun) less than 1.017 astronomical units. (All asteroids and comets with a perihelion less than 1.3 astronomical units are considered NEOs.)
His passage, while notable, is not uncommon; in fact, last year saw many properties come closer, if not closer. Notable among them was, for example, the passage of a tiny asteroid TF 2025 approximately 260 miles) from the Earth’s surface.
This story originally appeared on WIRED Italy and was translated from Italian.