Near-Earth asteroid 2020 KF5 extremely close encounter: a image – 27 May 2020
At the end of May, the near-Earth asteroid 2020 KF5 safely approached our planet, reaching a minimum distance from the Earth of about 245000 km, 2/3rd of the average distance of the Moon. We captured it and here we share our image.
Near-Earth Asteroid 2020 KF5 – 27 May 2020.
The image above comes from a single, 300-seconds exposure, remotely taken with the “Elena” (PlaneWave 17″+Paramount ME+SBIG STL-6303E) robotic unit available at Virtual Telescope. The telescope tracked the fast apparent motion of the asteroid, this is why stars show as long trails, while the asteroid looks like a faint, but sharp dot of light in the center of the image, marked by an arrow..
At the imaging time, 2020 KF5 was at about 600000 km from the Earth and it was safely approaching us. It was discovered by the Mt. Lemmon Survey on 26 May 2020.
This 3.5 – 7.9 meters large asteroid reached its minimum distance (about 246000 km) from us on 28 May 2020, at 12:47 UTC. Of course, there were no risks at all for our planet.
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