Near-Earth Asteroid 2022 KO3 very close encounter: a image – 29 May 2022
On 30 May 2022, the near-Earth asteroid 2022 KO3 will have a very close, but safe encounter with our Earth, coming as close as 284.000 km from its center. We captured it while approaching us.
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.
At the imaging time, asteroid 2022 KO3 was at about 790.000 millions of km from the telescope and was quickly approaching.
This 6.5 – 14 meters large asteroid (source: Nasa/JPL) was discovered by the Pan-STARRS 2 survey on 26 May 2022 and announced the following day. Of course, there are no risks at all for our planet.
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