Potentially Hazardous Asteroid (488453) 1994 XD close encounter: a image – 8 June 2023
We spotted the potentially hazardous asteroid (488453) 1994 XD again, while waiting for its relatively close and obviously safe encounter with the Earth, next 12 June. It will come as close as 3.1 million of km, 8 times the average lunar distance.
Potentially Hazardous Asteroid (488453) 1994 XD: 8 June 2023.
The image above comes from the average of six, 60-second exposures, remotely taken with the Celestron C14+Paramount ME+SBIG ST8-XME robotic unit available as part of the Virtual Telescope Project. The telescope tracked the asteroid during image acquisition.
At the imaging time, asteroid (488453) 1994 XD was at about 6.5 million of kilometers from the Earth and it was slowly approaching us. This is a binary asteroid, as observations performed via the Arecibo radio telescope showed in 2005. The asteroid was discovered by the Spacewatch survey, from Kitt Peak Observatory, on 1 Dec. 1994.
This 370m – 830m large asteroid will reach its minimum distance (about 3.1 millions of km, about 8 times the average lunar distance) from us on 12 June 2023, at 00:53 UTC (source: Nasa/JPL). Of course, there are no risks at all for our planet.
We will show this asteroid live, on line, next 11 June, at 22:00 UTC.
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