Near-Earth Asteroid 2025 QD8 very close encounter: an image – 1 Sept. 2025.
We imaged again the near-Earth Asteroid 2025 QD8 on the way to its very close, but safe encounter with the Earth, happening on 3 Sept. 2025. This object will come as close as 218.000 km from us, 57% of the average lunar distance. We will show it live, online!
The image above comes from a single 120-second exposure, remotely taken with the “Elena” (PlaneWave 17″ + Paramount MEII + SBIG STL-6303E) robotic unit available as part of the Virtual Telescope Project in Manciano, Italy. The telescope tracked the apparent motion of the asteroid, showing as a dot in the center of the image, indicated by an arrow: this is why the stars look like short trails.
When we imaged it, asteroid 2025 QD8 was at about 1.9 millions km from us and approaching our planet.
This 17-38 meter large asteroid will reach its minimum distance (about 218.000 km, 57% of the average lunar distance) from us on 3 Sept. 2025, at 14:57 UTC (source: Nasa/JPL). Of course, there were no risks at all for our planet.
We will show this object live on 2 Sept. 2025, starting at 23:00 UTC!
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