Near-Earth Asteroid 2022 ES3 very close encounter: a image – 13 Mar. 2022
On 13 Mar. 2022, the near-Earth asteroid 2022 ES3 had a safe, very close encounter with the Earth, coming as close as 334.000 km from its center. We showed it to the community. Here it is our image and podcast.
Near-Earth Asteroid 2022 ES3: 13 Mar. 2022
The image above comes from a single, 60-second 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 look like long trails.
At the imaging time, asteroid 2022 ES3 was at about 334.000 km from the Earth’s center, that is exactly at its nominal minimum distance, 87% the average lunar one.
This 9.6 – 21 meters large asteroid (source: Nasa/JPL) was discovered from the Kitt Peak Observatory (Arizona) on 7 Mar. 2022 and announced the same day. Of course, there were no risks at all for our planet.
Below is the recording from our very successful live feed:
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