Potentially Hazardous Asteroid 2022 RM4 close encounter: a image – 31 Oct. 2022
The Potentially Hazardous Asteroid 2022 RM4 is safely coming as close as 2.3 millions of km, six times the average lunar distance. We imaged it 24 hours earlier, waiting for its flyby.
Potentially Hazardous Asteroid 2022 RM4. 31 Oct. 2022.
The picture above comes from a single 120-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, this is why stars look like long trails, while the asteroid is a sharp dot of light.
At the imaging time, potentially hazardous asteroid 2022 RM4 was at about 3.1 millions of km from us and still safely approaching our Earth.
This 330-740 meters large asteroid (source: Nasa/JPL) was discovered by the Pan-STARRS survey on 12 Sept. 2022 and announced three days later. On 1 Nov. 2022, at 18:26 UTC, it will come as close as 6 lunar distances, about 2.3 millions of km: of course, there are no risks at all for our planet.
We will show it live on the night of its fly-by!
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