Discovery of the first asteroid near Venus

A large team of astronomers discovered the first asteroid inside the orbit of Venus using the Zwicky Transient Facility located at the Palomar Observatory in California, United States. The asteroid has been named 2020 AV2 and is roughly 2 km in size with an aphelion distance (i.e., the point in the orbit of an object where it is farthest from the Sun) of 0.65 astronomical units. The discovery could very well indicate that there may be a yet undiscovered population of asteroid lying outside of the asteroid belt and if more such asteroids are discovered, currently favored asteroid population models may need to be adjusted.

Image of the largest asteroid Ceres. Source Wikipedia

As of this writing, almost all of 1 million known asteroids lie between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter with only a handful lying near the orbit of Earth. Many scientists argue that there must be another population of asteroids present near the orbit of Venus. However, no such asteroids have been detected until January of 2020 when a team of astronomers using the Zwicky Transient Facility made the remarkable detection of the asteroid named 2020 AV2. The new study confirms the detection using the same facility and reported that 2020 AV2 is roughly 2 km in size orbiting the Sun at an aphelion distance of 0.65 astronomical units (an astronomical unit is a unit of measurement equal to 149.6 million kilometers, the mean distance from the center of the earth to the center of the sun).

Artist's illustration of the asteroid belt. Source: NASA

Spectroscopic analysis of the asteroid revealed the presence of a reddish surface which could be due to the presence of silicate and agree with the theoretical predictions of near-Earth asteroid (NEA) models and is expected to have a reflectivity of roughly 22%. Computer simulations suggest that the asteroid 2020 AV2 will only have a stable orbit on the timescales of 10 million years, entering into temporary resonances with the terrestrial planets and Jupiter before its orbit evolves onto close-encounter paths with the gas giant leading to its eventual ejection from the Solar System. The authors conclude by noting that 2020 AV2 could have originated from a source of asteroids located closer to the Sun, such as near the stability regions located inside the orbit of Mercury at roughly 0.1-0.2 astronomical units where large asteroids could have formed and survived on time scales of the age of the Solar System.

Check out the following YouTube video to know more about 2020 AV2.

Article Information: W.-H. Ip et al., "A kilometer-scale asteroid inside Venus's orbit", arXiv: 2009.04125

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