Near-Earth asteroid 2020 TE6 extremely close encounter: a image – 18 Oct. 2020
In about one hour, the near-Earth asteroid 2020 TE6 will have a extremely close, but safe, approach with our planet, reaching a minimum distance from the Earth of about 230000 km, 0.6 times the average distance of the Moon. We imaged it around the fly-by.
Near-Earth asteroid 2020 TE6. 18 Oct. 2020.
The image above comes from a single, 60-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 TE6 was at about 237000 km from the Earth, basically at the fly-by distance.It was discovered by the Panstarrs survey on 15 Oct. 2020.
This 8.4 – 19 meters large asteroid will reach its minimum distance (about 230000 km) from us on 18 Oct. 2020, at 19:19 UTC (source: Nasa/JPL). Of course, there are no risks at all for our planet.
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