{"id":10134,"date":"2023-04-26T01:33:56","date_gmt":"2023-04-25T20:03:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/?p=10134"},"modified":"2025-03-29T17:34:18","modified_gmt":"2025-03-29T12:04:18","slug":"what-is-3200-phaethon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/what-is-3200-phaethon\/","title":{"rendered":"What is 3200 Phaethon?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>About 3200 Phaethon:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>It is <strong>classified as an asteroid<\/strong> &#8211; the <strong>first to be discovered via satellite.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>It was <strong>discovered on Oct. 11, 1983, <\/strong>using the Infrared Astronomical Satellite, and n<strong>amed after the Greek myth of Phaethon<\/strong>, son of the sun god Helios, d<strong>ue to its close approach to Sun.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>It is <strong>blue in colour<\/strong>, which is rare for an asteroid.<\/li>\n<li>It <strong>orbits the sun every 524 days<\/strong> (1.43 years), <strong>coming as close as 0.14 astronomical units <\/strong>(AU) and reaching as far as 2.40 AU from the sun.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>Its <strong>orbit is highly elliptical<\/strong>. It <strong>completes a rotation on its axis every 3.60 hours.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Phaethon is about<strong> 6.3 kilometers in diameter<\/strong>, making it larger than 99% of asteroids.<\/li>\n<li>Phaethon&#8217;s orbit is <strong>0.02 AU from Earth&#8217;s orbit at its closest point<\/strong>. This means that there is a wide berth between this asteroid and Earth at all times.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Mystery:<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li>While <strong>Phaethon looked like an asteroid \u2013 it appeared to be the source of the annual Geminid meteor shower.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>In 2021, scientists suggested that some of this o<strong>bject\u2019s comet-like behaviour might stem from sodium fizzing<\/strong> from its surface.\u00a0<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>What is Geminid meteor shower?<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>The Geminids meteor shower, which peaks during mid-December each year, is considered to be <strong>one of the best and most reliable annual meteor showers.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>During its peak, <strong>120 Geminid meteors can be seen per hour <\/strong>under perfect conditions.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>Unlike a majority of the meteor showers we experience on Earth, the <strong>Geminids are the product of an asteroid.\u00a0<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>The reliable shower produces bright meteors <strong>associated with the asteroid Phaethon<\/strong>, a strange blue rock that acts like a comet.\u00a0<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>What is an astronomical unit (AU)?<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>An Astronomical Unit (AU) is the <strong>average distance between Earth and the Sun<\/strong>, which is about 93 million miles or 1<strong>50 million kilometers.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Astronomical units are usually <strong>used to measure distances within our Solar System.<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<h3>Q1)\u00a0What is an Asteroid?<\/h3>\n<p>Asteroids are small, rocky objects that orbit the Sun. Although asteroids orbit the Sun like planets, they are much smaller than planets.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Source:<\/strong>\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.news9live.com\/science\/solar-flare-monitoring-spacecraft-reveals-asteroid-phaethons-comet-like-behaviour-au941-2117747\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><u>Solar flare-monitoring spacecraft reveals asteroid Phaethon\u2019s comet-like behaviour<\/u><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Phaethon is classified as an asteroid &#8211; the first to be discovered via satellite.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":10135,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-10134","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-upsc-prelims-current-affairs","8":"no-featured-image-padding"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10134\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}