Near-Earth Asteroid 2018 RC very close encounter: image and podcast (8 Sept. 2018)

We shared live the near-Earth asteroid 2018 RC  while it was close to its minimum distance from our planet. It was a great experience, with many thousands of viewers connected from all around the world. Here it is a postcard from the event.

Near-Earth Asteroid 2018 RC: 8 Sept. 2018

Near-Earth Asteroid 2018 RC: 8 Sept. 2018

The image above comes from a single, 180-seconds exposure, remotely taken with “Elena” (PlaneWave 17″+Paramount ME+SBIG STL-6303E) robotic unit available at Virtual Telescope. The telescope tracked the fast (140″/minute) apparent motion of the asteroid, this is why stars show as small trails, while the asteroid looks like a bright,  sharp dot of light in the center of the image.

At the imaging time, asteroid 2018 RC was at about 330.000 km from the Earth and it was on its way safely approaching us.

This 32-71 meters large asteroid will reach its minimum distance (220.000 km) from us next 9 Sept. 2018, at 12:09 UTC. Needless to say, there are no risks at all for our planet.

Below is the podcast from our live streaming covering the flyby.

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