Near-Earth Asteroid 2022 WM7 extremely close encounter: a image – 27 Nov. 2022

On 28 Nov. 2022, the near-Earth asteroid 2022 WM7 will have an extremely close, but safe encounter with our Earth, coming as close as 78.500 km from its center. We captured it while it was approaching us.

Near-Earth Asteroid 2022 WM7: 27 Nov. 2022.

Near-Earth Asteroid 2022 WM7: 27 Nov. 2022.

The image above comes from a single, 300-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 WM7 was at about 250.000 km (65% of the average lunar distance) from us and was quickly approaching our planet. The minimum distance (78.500 km, 20% of the average lunar distance) will be reached on 28 Nov. at 02:24 UTC (source: Nasa/JPL).

This 2.8 – 6.4 meters large asteroid (source: Nasa/JPL) was discovered by the Pan-STARRS survey on 26 Nov. 2022 and announced the following day. Of course, there are no risks at all for our planet.

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