Near-Earth Asteroid 2020 CG2 very close encounter: an image (16 Feb. 2020)
One hour ago, the near-Earth asteroid 2020 CG2 had a safe, very close encounter with our planet, reaching a minimum distance from us of about 850.000 km, 2.3 times the average distance the Moon. A few hours before we grabbed it, here it is our image.
Near-Earth Asteroid 2020 CG2: 16 Feb. 2020
The image above comes from a single, 240-seconds exposure, remotely taken with “Elena” (PlaneWave 17″+Paramount ME+SBIG STL-6303E) robotic unit available at Virtual Telescope. The telescope tracked the fast apparent motion (100″/minute) of the asteroid, this is why stars show as long trails, while the asteroid looks like a sharp dot of light in the center of the image, marked by an arrow.
At the imaging time, 2020 CG2 was at about 940.000 km from the Earth and it was on its way approaching us. It was discovered by the Palomar Transient Factory early on Valentine’s Day.
This 35-78 meters large asteroid reached its minimum distance (about 850.000 km) from us on 17 Feb. 2020, at 08:19 UTC. Of course, there were no risks at all for our planet.
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