Potentially Hazardous Asteroid 2019 LH5 close encounter: a image – 4 July 2023
Next 7 July 2023, the large (diameter between 210 and 470 meters) potentially hazardous asteroid 2019 LH5 will have a relatively close and obviously safe encounter with the Earth. It will come as close as 5.7 million of km, about 15 times the average lunar distance. We observed it last night.
Potentially Hazardous Asteroid 2019 LH5: a image – 4 July 2023
The image above comes from a single 180-second exposure, remotely taken with the Celestron C14+Paramount ME+SBIG ST8-XME robotic unit available as part of the Virtual Telescope Project.
At the imaging time, asteroid 2019 LH5 was at about 7.1 million of km from the Earth and it was slowly approaching us. The asteroid was discovered by the Mt. Lemmon Survey on 6 June 2019.
This 210m – 470m large asteroid will reach its minimum distance (about 5.7 million of km, about 15 times the average lunar distance) from us on 7 July 2023, at 04:11 UTC (source: Nasa/JPL). Of course, there are no risks at all for our planet.
We will show this asteroid live, online, next 6 July 2023, as part of the celebrations for Asteroid Day 2023: see here!
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