Near-Earth Asteroid 2024 RL8 close encounter: an image – 10 Sept. 2024
We imaged again the near-Earth asteroid 2024 RL8, going to have a safe close encounter with the Earth on 11 Sept., coming as close as 430.000 km, about 1,1 times the average lunar distance. We present our image here.
Near-Earth Asteroid 2024 RL8: 10 Sept. 2024.
The image above comes from a single 300-second exposure, 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.
At the imaging time, asteroid 2024 RL8 was at about 1,3 millions of km from us, on its way to its fly-by with the Earth.
This 9,2 – 21 m large asteroid will reach its minimum distance (about 430.000 km from the center of the Earth, 1.1 times the average lunar distance) from us on 11 Sept. 2024, at 22:51 UTC (source: Nasa/JPL). Of course, there are no risks at all for our planet.
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