Potentially Hazardous Asteroid (7335) 1989 JA close encounter: a new image, at its maximum brightness – 25 May 2022
The potentially hazardous asteroid (7335) 1989 JA is almost at its minimum distance from us and right now reached its peak in brightness. We will share it live soon, but here it is our last image.
Potentially Hazardous Asteroid (7335) 1989 JA – 24 May 2022.
See asteroid (7335) 1989 JA live here!
The picture above comes from a single 120-second exposure, remotely taken with the “Elena” (PlaneWave 17″+Paramount ME+SBIG STL-6303E) robotic unit available at Virtual Telescope Project. The telescope tracked the fast, apparent motion of the minor planet, this is why stars look like streaks. At the imaging time, the object was just 20 degrees above the horizon.
When we captured the image above, asteroid (7335) 1989 JA was at about 4.5 millions of km from the Earth and it was still 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 object 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 two life feeds: details here!
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