Near-Earth Asteroid 2019 UM12 very close encounter: an image (7 Nov. 2019)
Later today, 7 Nov. 2019, the near-Earth asteroid 2019 UM12 will safely come very close to our planet, reaching a minimum distance from us of 487.000 km, a bit more than the average distance the Moon. Last night we grabbed it, here it is our image.
Near-Earth Asteroid 2019 UM12: 7 Nov. 2019
The image above comes from a single, 300-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 asteroid, this is why stars show as long trails, while the asteroid looks like a faint, sharp dot of light in the center of the image, marked by an arrow.
At the imaging time, asteroid 2019 UM12 was at about 1.15 millions of km from the Earth and it was on its way approaching us. A very bright (phase 80%) Moon was just 18 degrees away in the sky.
This 31-69 meters large asteroid will reach its minimum distance (487.000 km) from us on 7 Nov. 2019, at 17:41 UTC. Of course, there are no risks at all for our planet.
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