We now know the shape of notorious asteroid 2024 YR4 that dominated headlines recently — it’s probably ‘suburban,’ too

Asteroid 2024 YR4, previously feared to impact Earth in 2032, has been determined to originate from the central main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, an unexpected finding. New observations from Gemini South and Keck Observatory show the asteroid’s retrograde spin and rapid rotation period of 20 minutes, as well as its flattened, hockey-puck-like shape, suggesting it may have once been a boulder on a larger rubble-pile asteroid. These findings, detailed in a preprint paper for The Astrophysical Journal Letters, provide valuable insights for assessing potentially threatening asteroids and highlight the importance of rapid response observations.

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