Amor
Key facts
- What it is
- Near-Earth asteroid (namesake of the Amor group)
- Size
- About 1 km across
- Discovered
- 1932, by Eugène Delporte
- Spacecraft
- Not yet visited
- Orbit group
- Amor
- Average distance from the Sun
- 1.92 au (about 290 million km)
- Time to go round the Sun
- 2.7 years
- Closest and farthest from the Sun
- 1.09 to 2.75 au
- Tilt of its orbit
- 11.9°
- Closest its orbit comes to Earth's
- 16,000,000 km (42 times the Moon's distance)
An au (astronomical unit) is Earth's average distance from the Sun, about 150 million km. Orbit figures are from open tracking data, figures last updated 1 Nov 2026.
Amor is a small asteroid, roughly a kilometre across, best known for the group of asteroids named after it. The Belgian astronomer Eugène Delporte discovered it at Uccle, near Brussels, on 12 March 1932, as it passed about 16 million kilometres from Earth.
Astronomers sort near-Earth asteroids into groups by the shape of their orbits around the Sun. The Amor asteroids come inside the orbit of Mars and approach Earth's orbit from outside, but they never cross it. Their closest point to the Sun lies between Earth's distance from the Sun and about 1.3 times that distance. Eros, the first near-Earth asteroid found, is an Amor asteroid, and so is Ganymed, the largest.
Because Amors never cross Earth's path, they cannot hit us while their orbits stay as they are. Orbits do change slowly over long periods, however, as the planets tug on them, so an Amor can become an Earth-crosser over thousands or millions of years, and the reverse.
Many Amor asteroids also cross the orbit of Mars, and a few come close enough to it to be studied as possible sources of material in the inner Solar System. Some of them are thought to have been delivered from the inner main belt, where gentle nudges from sunlight and the gravity of Jupiter steer fragments into new orbits.
Amor itself is named after the Roman god of love, also known as Cupid. Its place in the history of astronomy comes not from its own features, but from the class of objects that carries its name.
Coming close to Earth
Its next passes within about 30 million km of Earth, worked out from its orbit. Each one is a safe miss.
| Date | Distance | In Moon distances |
|---|---|---|
| 7 Apr 2089 | 30,000,000 km | 77 |
| 31 Mar 2097 | 21,000,000 km | 55 |
| 28 Mar 2105 | 17,000,000 km | 44 |
| 28 Mar 2113 | 17,000,000 km | 45 |
| 27 Mar 2121 | 17,000,000 km | 43 |
| 25 Mar 2129 | 16,000,000 km | 42 |