Near-Earth Asteroid 2023 NT1 extremely close encounter: a image – 15 July 2023
On 13 July 2023, the near-Earth asteroid 2023 NT1 had an extremely close, but safe encounter with our Earth, coming as close as 100.000 km from its center. It was spotted two days later, once leaving us and we contributed to its confirmation.
Near-Earth Asteroid 2023 NT1: 15 July 2023.
The image above comes from the average of nine, 30-second exposures, remotely taken with the Celestron C14+Paramount ME+SBIG ST8-XME robotic unit available as part of the Virtual Telescope Project facility in Manciano, Italy. Those images were taken while the object still had a temporary designation, needing further follow-up observations before to be officially announced with a reliable orbit. Our astrometry was reported in the discovery MPEC 2023-O01 Circular, issued on July 16.
At the imaging time, asteroid 2023 NT1 was at about 2.3 million of km and already leaving our planet. The minimum distance (about 100.000 km, 26% of the average lunar distance) was reached on 13 July. at 10:12 UTC and its size is estimated in the 19m – 59m range (source: Minor Planet Center).
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