Near-Earth asteroid 2020 MP1 very close encounter: a image – 24 June 2020
A few hours ago, the near-Earth asteroid 2020 MP1 safely approached our planet, reaching a minimum distance from the Earth of about 460000 km, 1.2 times the average distance of the Moon. We spotted it and present our image here.
Near-Earth Asteroid 2020 MP1 – 24 June 2020.
The image above comes from a single, 120-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 bright and sharp dot of light in the center of the image, marked by an arrow.
At the imaging time, asteroid 2020 MP1 was at about 463000 km from the Earth and it was still safely approaching us. It was discovered by the ATLAS project on 21 June 2020.
This 17-39 meters large asteroid reached its minimum distance (about 460000 km) from us on 25 June 2020, at 02:04 UTC. Of course, there were no risks at all for our planet.
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