Potentially Hazardous Asteroid (162082) 1998 HL1 close encounter: movie and image (21 Oct. 2019)
We imaged again the potentially hazardous asteroid (162082) 1998 HL1 while it is safely approaching our planet: the fly-by will be next 25 Oct., with the asteroid at about 6.2 millions km from us. We will show it live at that very moment, online!
Potentially hazardous asteroid (162082) 1998 HL1: 21 Oct. 2019
* See asteroid (162082) 1998 HL1 live here! *
After our very successful attempt two nights ago, we spied this intriguing asteroid again.
The image above comes from a single 300-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, indicated by a white arrow.
At the imaging time, the potentially hazardous asteroid (PHA) (162082) 1998 HL1 was at about 7.3 millions of km from the Earth and it was heading to the mentioned close approach, when it will be one millions of km closer than here. Its estimated diameter sits somewhere in the 440 m – 990 m range.
Below is a movie made using 378 frames, each with an exposure of 8 seconds, grabbed back to back on 21 Oct. 2019, from 17:31:21 to 18:52:33: (162082) 1998 HL1 is easily visible in the center while it surfs the sky. As the movie lasts 18.9 and covers 4872 seconds, the “speed” you see is 258 times faster than in reality.
Full res version of the animation is available here.
Around the fly by time, this asteroid will be visible with amateur telescopes, provided they will be at least 200 mm in diameter. Those having a digital imagining equipment, can record 1998 HL1 and its motion even with smaller telescopes.
We will be showing the potentially hazardous asteroid (162082) 1998 HL1 live, online: join this cosmic exploration from the comfort of your home!
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