Potentially Hazardous Asteroid (612356) 2002 JX8 close encounter: a new image and movie – 6 May 2025.
We managed to spot the Potentially Hazardous Asteroid (612356) 2002 JX8 again, almost at its minimum distance from the Earth: on 9 May 2025, it will safely come as close as 4.2 millions of km from us, 10.9 times the average lunar distance. We will show it live!
Potentially Hazardous Asteroid (612356) 2002 JX8: 6 May 2025.
The image above comes from a single 120-second exposure, remotely taken with the the Celestron C14+Paramount ME+SBIG ST-10XME robotic unit available as part of the Virtual Telescope Project. The telescope tracked the apparent motion of the asteroid, so it looks like a sharp dot of light, marked with a white arrow, while stars show as short trails. A very bright (72%) Moon was high in the sky.
We also managed to make a time-lapse, putting together 60, 30-second frames, taken back to back:
Potentially Hazardous Asteroid (612356) 2002 JX8, a time-lapse: 6 May 2025.
At the imaging time, potentially hazardous asteroid (612356) 2002 JX8 was at about 4.3 million of km from us and safely approaching.
This 230 – 510 meters large asteroid will reach its minimum distance (about 4.2 millions of km, 10.9 times the average lunar distance) from us on 9 May 2025, at 11:02 UTC (source: Nasa/JPL). Of course, there are no risks at all for our planet.
We will show asteroid 2002 JX8 live, online, on 8 May 2025: join the live feed here!
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