You are hereHermes 1937 1942 1954 1974 1986
Hermes 1937 1942 1954 1974 1986
Hermes' orbit is the most chaotic of all near-Earth asteroids. The elliptical orbit of asteroid Hermes (red) brings it to the inner solar system every 777 days.
On Oct. 28, 1937, astronomer Karl Reinmuth of Heidelberg noticed an odd streak of light in a picture he had just taken of the night sky. About as bright as a 9th magnitude star, it was an asteroid, close to Earth and moving fast--so fast that he named it Hermes, the herald of Olympian gods.
On Oct. 30, 1937, Hermes glided past Earth only twice as far away as the Moon, racing across the sky at a rate of 5 degrees per hour.
Nowadays only meteors and Earth-orbiting satellites move faster.
Usually our planet is far away when the orbit crossing happens, but in 1937, 1942, 1954, 1974 and 1986, Hermes came harrowingly close to Earth itself. We know about most of these encounters only because Lowell Observatory astronomer Brian Skiff re-discovered Hermes… on Oct. 15, 2003.
Astronomers around the world have been tracking it carefully ever since, to trace Hermes' path backwards in time, and so they identified all the unnoticed flybys.
