Near-Earth asteroid 2017 UA close encounter: an image (17 Oct. 2017)
On 17 Oct. 2017, the near-Earth asteroid 2017 UA made a close encounter with the Earth, safely coming almost as close as the Moon. At Virtual Telescope we did some nice images while it was leaving us.
Near-Earth asteroid 2017 UA close encounter: 17 Oct. 2017
The image above comes from the average of two, 120-seconds exposures, remotely taken with “Elena” (PlaneWave 17″+Paramount ME+SBIG STL-6303E) robotic unit available at Virtual Telescope. The telescope tracked the fast (110 arc-seconds per minute) apparent motion of the object, so stars are trailing, while the asteroid looks like a faint dot of light in the center.
The size of this objects is in the range of 5-11 meters and on 17 Oct. 2017, at 15:16 UT, it reached a minimum distance from the Earth of 456.000 km, with speed relative to Earth of 7.8 km/s.
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