Potentially Hazardous Asteroid (3122) Florence: an image (28 Aug. 2017)
Next 01 Sept. 2017, the potentially hazardous asteroid (3122) Florence will safely come within 7 millions of km from the Earth, becoming the closest object of that size visiting us from the end of the XIX Century. While waiting to show it live, online to the world, at Virtual Telescope we captured a nice image of this rock.
Potentially Hazardous Asteroid (3122) Florence: 28 Aug. 2017
The image above comes from a single, 60-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 object, so stars are trailing. The long vertical trail on the left is the geostationary satellite AMC-14. Some clouds crossed the field of view during the exposure. At the imaging time, (3122) Florence was at about 8 millions of km from us and approaching. It will reach a magnitude of ~ 8.5, easy to see with small binoculars, too.
Soon we will publish a star chart showing its path across the stars.
See asteroid (3122) Florence live, online, from the comfort of your home!
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