Near-earth asteroid 2024 BJ very close encounter: image and video – 27 Jan. 2024.
We captured some stunning footage of near-Earth asteroid 2024 BJ while it was at its minimum distance from us, about 354000km, closer than the Moon.
Near-Earth Asteroid 2024 BJ: 27 Jan. 2024.
The image above comes from a single 180-second exposure, 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 fast apparent motion of the asteroid, so it looks like a sharp dot of light, indicated with a white arrow, while stars leave long, bright streaks on the background.
At the imaging time, asteroid 2024 BJ was at about 354000 km from us, at its minimum distance, 92% of the average lunar distance and it was already leaving the Earth.
We managed to capture many short exposures, to create the interesting movie below. Note how the asteroid blinks while it spins, this indicating it has a very elongated shape.
Near-Earth asteroid 2024 BJ moves across the stars while spinning fast.
We were happy to share the view in real time with the International community, below is the podcast from our live feed:
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