Beijing, Bolong.id – The Nanshan One-meter Wide-field Telescope discovered a new near-earth asteroid, according to the Xinjiang Astronomical Observatory (XAO) under the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Reported from People’s Daily Online, Thursday (09/03/23), the International Astronomical Union’s Center for Minor Planets confirmed the discovery and assigned the asteroid the provisional number 2023 DB2.
The distance between the asteroid and Earth’s orbit is 30 million km, roughly 80 times the distance between Earth and the moon, said Ali Esamdin, an XAO researcher.
The discovery was the result of a collaboration between XAO and a team of amateur astronomers named Xingming.
Gao Xing, leader of the amateur astronomy team, said that the cooperation between professional astronomers and amateur astronomy teams can reveal more secrets about stars and bring astronomy closer to ordinary people.
