Potentially Hazardous Asteroid (455176) 1999 VF22 close encounter: a image – 11 Feb. 2022
Next 22 Feb. 2022, the potentially hazardous asteroid (455176) 1999 VF22 will have a relatively close and obviously safe encounter with our planet. It will come as close as 5.4 millions of km, about 14 times the average lunar distance. Here it is our recent image.
Potentially Hazardous Asteroid (455176) 1999 VF22: 11 Feb. 2022.
The image above comes from a single 300-second exposure, remotely taken with the “Elena” (PlaneWave 17″+Paramount ME+SBIG STL-6303E) robotic unit available at Virtual Telescope. The telescope tracked the apparent motion of the asteroid.
At the imaging time, asteroid (455176) 1999 VF22 was at about 35 millions of km from the Earth and it was slowly approaching us. It was discovered by the Catalina Sky Survey on 10 Nov. 1999.
This 190 – 430 meters large asteroid will reach its minimum distance (about 5,4 millions of km, 14 times the average lunar distance) from us on 22 Feb. 2022, at 07:54 UTC (source: Nasa/JPL). Of course, there are no risks at all for our planet.
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