Near-Earth Asteroid 2022 HB1 very close encounter: a image – 25 Apr. 2022
On 26 Apr. 2022, the near-Earth asteroid 2022 HB1 will have a very close, but safe encounter with the Earth, coming as close as 200.000 km from its center. We captured a stunning image while it was still approaching.
Near-Earth Asteroid 2022 HB1: 25 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 light. A couple of (vertical) artificial satellite trails are also visible.
At the imaging time, asteroid 2022 HB1 was at about 1.3 millions of km from the telescope and was quickly approaching.
This 9.2 – 21 meters large asteroid (source: Nasa/JPL) was discovered by the Mount Lemmon survey on 24 Apr. 2022 and announced the same day. Of course, there are no risks at all for our planet.
We scheduled a live feed showing asteroid 2022 HB1 in real time while at its brightest!
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