Potentially Hazardous Asteroid (138971) 2001 CB21 close encounter: a image – 11 Feb. 2022
A new image of the potentially hazardous asteroid (138971) 2001 CB21 was captured last night. This object will have its relatively close fly-by with the Earth next 4 March.
Potentially Hazardous Asteroid (138971) 2001 CB21: 11 Feb. 2022.
The image above comes from a single 300-second exposure, remotely taken with the “Elena” (PlaneWave 17″+Paramount ME+SBIG STL-6303E) robotic unit available at Virtual Telescope. The telescope tracked the apparent motion of the asteroid, so it looks like a sharp dot, with surrounding stars appearing slightly elongated. A very bright Moon was high in the sky.
At the imaging time, asteroid (138971) 2001 CB21 was at about 22 millions of km from the Earth and it was slowly approaching us. It was discovered by the LINEAR survey on 2 Feb. 2001.
This 560 – 1300 meters large asteroid will reach its minimum distance (about 4.9 millions of km, 13 times the average lunar distance) from us on 4 Mar. 2022, at 07:59 UTC (source: Nasa/JPL). Of course, there are no risks at all for our planet.
* See potentially hazardous asteroid (138971) 2011 CB21 live! *
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