Hawaii telescope discovers asteroid

[September 28, 2010]  HONOLULU (AP) -- An asteroid that will come within 4 million miles of Earth in mid-October has been discovered by a University of Hawaii telescope.

The university's Institute for Astronomy said Monday that the object located by the Pan STARRS PS1 telescope on Maui has a diameter of about 150 feet. It's the first potentially hazardous object it has been used to discover.

A university member of the PS1 Scientific Consortium, Robert Jedicke, says the object won't hit Earth in the immediate future. It was discovered in images acquired Sept. 16, when it was about 20 million miles away.

[Associated Press]

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