Potentially Hazardous Asteroid 2024 ON close encounter: an image – 31 Aug. 2024.
We imaged the potentially hazardous asteroid 2024 ON while it was safely approaching our planet, going to have an interesting encounter with our planet, next 17 Sept. 2024, coming as close as one million of km from us, 2.6 times the average lunar distance.
Potentially Hazardous Asteroid 2024 ON: 31 Aug. 2024.
The image above comes from the average of three, 120-second exposures, remotely taken with the “Elena” (PlaneWave 17″ + Paramount MEII + SBIG STL-6303E) 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. The sky was still bright because of the twilight.
At the imaging time, asteroid 2024 KH3 was at about 12.5 million of km from our planet and approaching.
This 220-480 m large asteroid will reach its minimum distance (about 1 million of km, 2.6 times the average lunar distance) from us on 17 Sept. 2024, at 10:19 UTC (source: Nasa/JPL). Of course, there are no risks at all for our planet.
We will show this asteroid live on 15 Sept. 2024!
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