Near-Earth Asteroid 2018 RC very close encounter: an image (6 Sept. 2018)
Next 9 Sept. 2018, the near-Earth asteroid 2018 RC will safely have a very close encounter with our planet, coming at about 220.000 km from us, about half of the average lunar distance. We imaged it last night.
Near-Earth Asteroid 2018 RC: 6 Sept. 2018
The image above comes from a single, 120-seconds exposure, remotely taken with “Elena” (PlaneWave 17″+Paramount ME+SBIG STL-6303E) robotic unit available at Virtual Telescope. The telescope tracked the apparent motion of the asteroid, this is why stars show as small trails, while the asteroid looks like a sharp dot of light in the center of the image.
At the imaging time, asteroid 2018 RC was at about 1.5 millions of km from the Earth and it was on its way approaching us.
This 32-71 meters large asteroid will reach its minimum distance (220.000 km) from us next 9 Sept. 2018, at 12:06 UTC. Of course, there are no risks at all for our planet.
At Virtual Telescope we will show it live online, on 9 Sept. 2018, starting at 22:00 UT.
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