天文学家发现已知轨道最短的小行星

天文学家发现了已知轨道最短的“罕见”小行星

Astronomers have made the rare discovery of a new asteroid circling the sun and whizzing past Earth every 151 days.

天文学家们罕见地发现了一颗新的小行星，它绕着太阳运行，每151天绕地球一圈。

The space rock is called 2019 LF6 and it has remained hidden from cosmic experts until now despite being 0.6 miles wide and orbiting near the Earth.

这块太空岩石被命名为2019 LF6，尽管它宽0.6英里，在地球附近轨道运行，但直到现在，它仍然没有被宇宙专家发现。

The newly discovered asteroid has the shortest orbit of any known asteroid.

这颗新发现的小行星是所有已知小行星中轨道最短的。

It was spotted by astronomers from the California Institute of Technology.

它是由加州理工学院的天文学家发现的。

Quanzhi Ye, a postdoctoral student at Caltech, explained: “LF6 is very unusual both in orbit and in size — its unique orbit explains why such a large asteroid eluded several decades of careful searches.”

加州理工学院博士后叶全智解释说:“LF6在轨道上和大小上都很罕见——它独特的轨道解释了为什么这么大的一颗小行星躲过了几十年的仔细搜索。”

The asteroid has an elliptical orbit so it travels way outside of the area in which the planets in our solar system orbit and actually gets closer to the sun than Mercury does.

这颗小行星的轨道是椭圆形的，所以它的运行距离我们太阳系中行星运行的区域很远，实际上它比水星离太阳更近。

As Mercury is the closest planet to the sun, the asteroid’s orbit is very impressive.

由于水星是离太阳最近的行星，所以这颗小行星的轨道令人特别关注。

The researchers think that the asteroid could have been slingshot out of the common plane of orbit when it came to the gravitational disturbances of Venus or Mercury.

研究人员认为，这颗小行星可能是在受到金星或水星引力干扰时，从共同的轨道平面上弹射出来的。

Ye discovered 2019 LF6 using a camera that rapidly scans the night sky and searchers for signals that indicate moving asteroids as well as exploding or flashing stars and he only had a short window to do it in because this type of asteroid is more visible 20 to 30 minutes before sunrise or after sunset.

叶全智发现2019 LF6是用一台相机快速扫描夜空，寻找代表移动的小行星、爆炸、闪烁的恒星的信号，他只有一个很短的时间窗口，因为这种类型的小行星在日出前20到30分钟或日落后才更容易看到。

Finding an asteroid this large is also quite rare.

发现这么大的小行星也相当罕见。

Ye said: “You don’t find kilometer-size asteroids very often these days.”

叶全智表示:“现在，千米大小的小行星都很难发现了。”