Asteroid Gallery

2003 XH₁₀ (Apollo making close approach)

2003 XH₁₀ was discovered by LINEAR on 2003 Dec 4th and posted on the NEO Confirmation Page later that day, but it had still not been confirmed by the next evening. By this time the uncertainty area was an ellipse about 14° x 2° in size and the asteroid predicted to be 17th magnitude, moving at about 30"/minute.

A search was started at Great Shefford and had covered about 3 square degrees by midnight, when the NEOCP ephemeris was updated because a second night of positions had been received by the MPC from LINEAR. The search at Great Shefford had not recorded the object, having reached about half way from the nominal ephemeris position to the actual place where the asteroid was.

2003 XH₁₀ had approached to within 7 lunar distances on 2003 Dec 04 and was fading as it receded from Earth during the next few days, just as the Moon was reaching full. At the time of writing (13th Dec) the object was last recorded by Powell Observatory (649) 4 days after discovery, on 2003 Dec 8th.