Asteroid 4179 Toutatis (formerly 1989 AC) was discovered by C. Pollas on January 4, 1989, at Caussols, France, on photographic plates taken on the 0.9-m Schmidt telescope by Alain Maury and Derral Mulholland during astrometric observations of Jupiter's faint satellites. Toutatis is the long streak in this image.

The discoverers named the asteroid after a Celtic/Gallic god whose name is invoked often in the well known comic book series "Les Aventures d'Asterix," set in ancient Gaul. Toutatis is the protector of Asterix and his compatriots, who fear nothing except that someday the sky may fall on their heads.)

Toutatis's eccentric, four-year orbit, illustrated here by JPL's Near-Earth Object Program Office, extends from just inside the Earth's orbit to the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. The plane of Toutatis's orbit is closer to the plane of the Earth's orbit than any other known several-kilometer Earth-orbit-crossing asteroid, or ECA. It is in a 3:1 mean-motion resonance with Jupiter that serves as a dynamical pathway from main-belt orbits to Earth-crossing orbits on time scales of a million years. Toutatis may have the most chaotic orbit studied to date, a consequence of the asteroid's frequent close approaches to Earth.

The following table of Toutatis close approaches is based on information available from the JPL Horizons Ephemeris System.

Toutatis Close Approaches (EMD = Earth-Moon distances)

Date         1992 Dec 8     1996 Nov 29     2000 Oct 31     2004 Sep 29

hh:mm             05:37           22:54           04:31           13:37

Dist AU    0.0241484197    0.0354303011    0.0738653055    0.0103592320

     km       3,612,552       5,300,298      11,050,092       1,549,719

     miles    2,244,774       3,293,452       6,866,209         962,951

     EMD            9.4            13.8            28.7             4.0

RA           13 17 41.8      13 35 28.3      14 32 12.3      14 31 33.2

Dec         -23 39 54.6     -21 43 27.8     -21 07 23.3     -59 40 29.9

Constell'n        Hydra           Virgo           Libra       Centaurus

The Sep. 29, 2004, approach is the closest in this century of any known asteroid at least as large as Toutatis (or more precisely, of any known asteroid with an absolute magnitude as small as H = 15.30).

This bizarre object is up to 1.5 miles wide, 2.9 miles long, and is tumbling through space. In the year 2004, on September 29, the Earth will pass very near Toutatis, closing to within a million miles (4 times the Earth-Moon distance) - the closest approach predicted for any asteroid or comet between now and 2060.

For more details: http://echo.jpl.nasa.gov/asteroids/4179_Toutatis/toutatis.html