Potentially Hazardous Asteroid (1566) Icarus rare close encounter: an image (15 June 2015)
Potentially Hazardous Asteroid (1566) Icarus rare close encounter: an image (15 June 2015)
While waiting for its close approach, happening later today at 15:39 UT, at Virtual Telescope we imaged the potentially hazardous asteroid (1566) Icarus on its way to its relatively close encounter with the Earth. Virtual Telescope will show (1566) Icarus live, online later today!
The image above is a single 60-seconds exposure, remotely taken with PlaneWave 17″+Paramount ME+SBIG STL-6303E robotic unit part of the Virtual Telescope. The robotic mount tracked the fast (45″/minute) apparent motion of the asteroid, so stars are trailing, while the asteroid is perfectly tracked (the minor planet is the sharp dot in the center). At the imaging time, the object was at about mag. 14.9 and at about 8.4 millions km from our planet.
A chart for 16 June is also available.
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