Potentially Hazardous Asteroid (7335) 1989 JA close encounter: a new image – 23 May 2022
The potentially hazardous asteroid (7335) 1989 JA is almost at its safe, minimum distance from us, being now very bright. While waiting to share it live, we captured it again.
See asteroid (7335) 1989 JA live here!
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 fast, apparent motion of the asteroid, this is why stars look like trails.
When we captured the image above, asteroid (7335) 1989 JA was at about 5.8 millions of km from the Earth and it was slowly approaching us. This large (1.8 km in diameter, source Nasa/JPL: the ESA/NEOCC indicates a diameter of 730 meters) minor planet was discovered by Eleanor Helin on 1 May 1989, from Palomar Observatory. Eleanor Francis “Glo” Helin pioneered the field of near-earth Objects.
This 1.8 km large asteroid will reach its minimum distance (about 4 millions of km, almost 10.5 times the average lunar distance) from us on 27 May 2022, at 14:26 UTC (source: Nasa/JPL). Of course, there are no risks at all for our planet.
We are very pleased to announce that on the occasion of asteroid (7335) 1989 JA fly-by, we will host a couple of events presenting very important news about our project: details here!
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