Near-Earth Asteroid 1998 VS is a candidate to reveal the Yarkovsky Effect

Sept. 1, 2018

SPACEWATCH® recovered 1998 VS in 2003, saving it from loss.

Near-Earth Asteroid 1998 VS is a candidate to reveal the Yarkovsky Effect:    http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2018A%26A...617A..61D  .

Detecting the Yarkovsky effect among near-Earth asteroids from astrometric data.   Del Vigna, A. et al.  2018.  Astronomy & Astrophysics, Volume 617, id.A61.

This Near-Earth Asteroid was discovered in 1998 by the LINEAR survey and followed for one month.  But by 2003, five years later, it had not been re-observed and was in danger of becoming lost.  SPACEWATCH® observers Anne S. Descour and Arianna E. Gleason recovered 1998 VS with the SPACEWATCH® 1.8-meter telescope (MPC site code 291) in 2003, 5 years after it had been last observed and had acquired a long uncertainty line of variation.  Without that, it may have remained lost and would never have become a Yarkovsky candidate when again re-observed in March 2019, this time by site code T12, the 2.2-meter telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii.