MAR 13, 2000 - Near-Earth Asteroid 3753 is the first place to check if you're interested in one of the most peculiar and least known objects in our solar system. It's a little chunk of rock - approximately 5 kilometers in diameter - named Cruithne (pronounced "croo-een'-ya"), an asteroid that shares Earth's orbital path around the Sun. It doesn't go around the Earth, mind you: like Earth, Cruithne orbits the Sun. Discovered in 1986, Cruithne has a most peculiar three-body "horseshoe" orbital path. The little planetoid requires some 385 years to complete a single revolution around the Sun. An ephemeris (RA/Declination only) for the years 1997-2002 is provided for this peculiar little planetoid, in case you might like to drop the thing into any horoscopes you might have lying around. Feel free to consider that ephemeris about as definitive as it gets, since it's produced by Paul Wiegert. He's one of the several astronomers who collaborated in disovering Cruithne's odd orbit, and he's the Near-Earth Asteroid 3753 webmaster.
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