Potentially Hazardous Asteroid 2024 HP close encounter: an image – 28 May 2024.
We imaged the Potentially Hazardous Earth asteroid 2024 HP a few days after its relatively close, but obviously safe encounter with the Earth.
The image above comes from a single 300-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 apparent motion of the asteroid, so it looks like a sharp dot of light, indicated with a white arrow, while stars leave bright streaks on the background.
At the imaging time, asteroid 2024 HP was at about 6.8 million of km from us, leaving us five days after its fly-by. This asteroid was discovered by the Mt. Lemmon Survey on 17 Apr. 2024.
This 160m – 350m large asteroid reached its minimum distance (about 5.9 million of km, 15.4 times the average lunar distance) from us on 23 May 2024, at 17:01 UTC (source: Nasa/JPL). Of course, there were no risks at all for our planet.
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