Near-Earth Object 2026 JH2 Ranks Zero on the Loeb Scale
On May 10, 2026, a new near-Earth object labeled 2026 JH2 (as announced here), was discovered by the Mount Lemmon Survey in Tucson, Arizona. Subsequently, other observatories confirmed that the object follows an elliptical orbit around the Sun, extending from the vicinity of Earth, with perihelion distance that is only 1% larger than the Earth-Sun separation (AU), and out to 3.83 AU.
2026 JH2 will pass closest to Earth tomorrow May, 18, 2026 at 21:23 UTC, arriving within 109,880 kilometers based on the NASA/JPL database here. This distance is 17.2 times larger than the Earth’s radius and 28.6% of the distance to the Moon. From the closest vantage point of 2026 JH2, the Earth will occupy an angular diameter of 6.7 degrees, which is 13.4 times larger than the diameter of the Moon when viewed from Earth.
The physical diameter of 2026 JH2 is estimated to be between 15 and 35 meters, roughly the length of a semi-truck or a bowling lane. At its close approach to Earth, it will brighten up to an apparent magnitude of 11.5, sufficiently bright to be detectable by small telescopes with an aperture larger than 8 centimeters.
Is such a close passage of a Solar System object anomalous?
Near-Earth objects of similar size pass within one third of the Earth-Moon distance approximately once a year based on NASA’s CNEOS catalog here.
All in all, 2026 JH2 should not raise any alarm and be ranked as 0 on the Loeb Classification Scale (as discussed here, here, here and here).
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Avi Loeb is the head of the Galileo Project, founding director of Harvard University’s — Black Hole Initiative, director of the Institute for Theory and Computation at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and the former chair of the astronomy department at Harvard University (2011–2020). He is a former member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and a former chair of the Board on Physics and Astronomy of the National Academies. He is the bestselling author of “Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth” and a co-author of the textbook “Life in the Cosmos”, both published in 2021. The paperback edition of his new book, titled “Interstellar”, was published in August 2024.
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