Travelers In The Night

Recently my Catalina Sky Survey teammates Carson Fuls and Greg Lenoard discovered an Aten asteroid which orbits the Sun once every 272 days and on a path that crosses the orbits of Venus and Earth a number of times each year. Atens account for only about 6% of the Earth approaching asteroids that asteroid hunters discover. They are relatively dim and difficult to discover because they spend most of their time inside the Earth's orbit with their sunlit side facing away from us. For example Carson and Greg's newly discovered asteroid, 2017 WJ16, is bright enough for asteroid hunters to track for only about 50 nights every couple of years. It is about 150 feet in diameter and travels on an orbit which can bring it to a bit more than three times the Moon's distance from Earth. When 2017 WJ16 is closer to the Sun than Earth it travels faster then we do allowing it to catch and just barely cross our orbit as we both travel about the Sun. In 2020, 2017 WJ16 will make one of it's closer approaches to us when it comes