Near-Earth Asteroid 2022 GZ1 very close encounter: a image – 5 Apr. 2022
On 6 Apr. 2022, the near-Earth asteroid 2022 GZ1 will have a very close, but safe encounter with the Earth, coming as close as 238.000 km from its center. We captured an image while it was still approaching.
Near-Earth Asteroid 2022 GZ1: 5 Apr. 2022.
The image above comes from a single, 180-second exposure, remotely taken with the “Elena” (PlaneWave 17″ + Paramount ME + SBIG STL-6303E) robotic unit available at Virtual Telescope. The telescope tracked the fast apparent motion of the asteroid, this is why stars look like long trails while the asteroid is a sharp dot of faint light.
At the imaging time, asteroid 2022 GZ1 was at about 493.000 km from the telescope and was quickly approaching. The object was quite low above the western horizon, so it was imaged under less-than-ideal conditions. The fly-by will be on 6 April 2022, at 11:58 UTC.
This 4.5 -10 meters large asteroid (source: Nasa/JPL) was discovered by the Mount Lemmon Survey on 5 Apr. 2022 and announced yeson the same day. Of course, there are no risks at all for our planet.
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