Near-Earth Asteroid 2018 VX1 very close encounter: an image (8 Nov. 2018)
While waiting for its close approach tomorrow, ready to show it live to the world, we observed near-Earth asteroid 2018 VX1 again. Here it is our latest image!
* NB: versione in Italiano qui *
The image above comes from a single, 600-seconds exposure, remotely taken with “Elena” (PlaneWave 17″+Paramount ME+SBIG STL-6303E) robotic unit available at Virtual Telescope. The telescope tracked the apparent motion of the asteroid, this is why stars show as long trails, while the asteroid looks like a sharp dot of light in the center of the image, marked by two red lines.
At the imaging time, asteroid 2018 VX1 was at about 1 million of km from the Earth.
This 8-18 meters large asteroid will reach its minimum distance (380.000 km) from us next 10 Nov. 2018, at 18:20 UTC. Of course, there are no risks at all for our planet.
The Virtual Telescope will show 2018 VX1 close encounter live, online, starting at 18:00 UTC!
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