Near-Earth asteroid 2012 TC4: new video while it approaches our planet
Near-Earth Asteroid 2012 TC4 (10 Oct. 2012)
The asteroid 2012 TC4 is now just about 30 hours before its close approach with our planet. While it comes closer and closer, its brightness increases, but will remain a telescopic object. At the Virtual Telescope we obtained more coverage, obtaining useful, astrometric data, to support scientist willing to investigate it by radar.
At the imaging time, the asteroid was about 800.000 km from the Earth, roughly twice the distance of the Moon. Early on Oct 12 it will touch a minimum distance of about 100.000 km.
The movie below is very interesting: while 2012 TC4 “flies” across the stars, it is easy to spot how it varies in brightness. To do this video, we remotely used the C14 unit part of the Virtual Telescope: the Paramount ME mount was asked to track the apparent motion of the asteroid.
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Don’t miss our live observing session of this asteroid next 11 Oct.!
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