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Score breakdown
· 7 badges
45 pts · Rare
Rare50 pts → Epic
Potentially hazardous+12
Darker than charcoal+10
Aten: mostly inside Earth's orbit+8
Carbonaceous — as old as the solar system+6
Near-Earth object+5
Tiny fragment (<1 km)+4
Catalogue designation only+0
Total score45
5 more points to reach Epic.
Badges
🌠Near-Earth object· +5
⚠️Potentially hazardous· +12
🤏Tiny fragment (<1 km)· +4
🔢Catalogue designation only
⚱️Aten: mostly inside Earth's orbit· +8
🕶️Darker than charcoal· +10
🖤Carbonaceous — as old as the solar system· +6
✨ Trivia
Handle with care
🛡️What 'hazardous' means. 'Potentially hazardous' is bookkeeping, not a prediction: it means the orbit passes within 0.05 AU of Earth's and the body is big enough to matter. Nothing on that list is known to be on a collision course.
☄️If it ever hit. A rock this size arriving at a typical 20 km/s would release around 50.3 thousand megatons — enough to devastate a region the size of a small country.
What it actually is
🛸Its orbit family. An Aten-class object, spending most of its time inside Earth's orbit and crossing ours from the sunward side — which makes this family wretchedly hard to spot against the daylight.
🌞Closest approach. At its nearest it comes within 0.67 AU of the Sun — inside the orbit of Venus.
🔁One lap. A single orbit around the Sun takes it about 320 days.
🥏How far it roams. Its orbit swings between 0.67 and 1.16 AU from the Sun.
Sense of scale
🧱Sense of scale. In everyday terms it is about 8.7 football pitches across.
Standing on it
🦘Don't jump. Escape velocity here is only around 0.55 m/s. A determined jump would launch you off it and into your own orbit around the Sun.
Properties
albedo
0.033
aphelion au
1.16
designation
65679
diameter km
0.918
eccentricity
0.2645
full name
65679 (1989 UQ)
h mag
19.62
inclination
1.3
mean motion deg day
1.127
moid au
0.014
name
(65679) 1989 UQ
number only
yes
orbit class
ATE
perihelion au
0.673
pha
yes
rotation period h
7.746
semi major au
0.9148
spec taxonomy
B
spect
B
About (65679) 1989 UQ
(65679) 1989 UQ is a rare neo. It has spectral type B and swings within 0.673 AU of the Sun at perihelion.
An Aten-class object, spending most of its time inside Earth's orbit and crossing ours from the sunward side — which makes this family wretchedly hard to spot against the daylight.
How to see it
Like any astronomical target, (65679) 1989 UQ is best seen from a dark site away from city lights, and when it is above the horizon depends on your latitude and the time of year. Because it moves against the background stars, the live position panel on this page tracks where it is right now. The visibility panel above works out tonight's viewing window for your saved location.
Why (65679) 1989 UQ is a rare neo
(65679) 1989 UQ scores 45 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 5 points would lift it into a rarer tier.
That score comes from 7 science badges — Near-Earth object, Potentially hazardous, Tiny fragment (<1 km), Catalogue designation only, Aten: mostly inside Earth's orbit, Darker than charcoal and Carbonaceous — as old as the solar system — each earned for a real, measurable property of the object. Rarity on Spacedle is never random: the more remarkable an object's astrophysics, the more badges it collects, the higher it scores, and the rarer it ranks.