Potentially Hazardous Asteroid (138971) 2001 CB21 close encounter: a image – 30 Jan. 2022
Next 4 Mar. 2022, the potentially hazardous asteroid (138971) 2001 CB21 will have a relatively close and obviously safe encounter with our planet. It will come as close as 4.9 millions of km, about 13 times the average lunar distance. Here it is our recent image.
Potentially Hazardous Asteroid (138971) 2001 CB21: 30 Jan. 2022.
The image above comes from a single 420-second exposure, remotely taken with the “Elena” (PlaneWave 17″+Paramount ME+SBIG STL-6303E) robotic unit available at Virtual Telescope. The telescope tracked the apparent motion of the asteroid.
At the imaging time, asteroid (138971) 2001 CB21 was at about 35 millions of km from the Earth and it was slowly approaching us. It was discovered by the LINEAR survey on 2 Feb. 2001.
This 560 – 1300 meters large asteroid will reach its minimum distance (about 4.9 millions of km, almost 13 times the average lunar distance) from us on 4 Mar. 2022, at 07:59 UTC (source: Nasa/JPL). Of course, there are no risks at all for our planet.
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