Potentially Hazardous Asteroid 2011 AM24 close encounter: an image – 15 July 2024.
Potentially Hazardous Asteroid 2011 AM24 will have a relatively close, but obviously safe encounter with the Earth next 26 July 2024, coming as close as 6.4 million of km from us. We captured it 10 days before its fly-by.
Potentially Hazardous Asteroid 2011 AM24: 15 July 2024.
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, bright dot of light, indicated with a white arrow, while stars leave bright streaks on the background.
When we captured the picture above, asteroid 2011 AM24 was at about 8.5 million of km from us. It brightened a lot respect to our previous observation, 40 days earlier.
This 500m large asteroid will reach its minimum distance (about 6.4 million of km, 16.7 times the average lunar distance) from us on 26 July 2024, at 15:56 UTC (source: Nasa/JPL). Of course, there are no risks at all for our planet.
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