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An infinite asteroid flew by Earth right now (Oct. 25), and you may watch it zip by in a video from the Digital Telescope Challenge.
Asteroid 1998 HL1 was three.86 million miles (6.21 million kilometers) away from Earth — about 10 occasions the common distance to the moon — when it makes its closest strategy at 1:17 p.m. EDT (1717 GMT), according to NASA.
The Digital Telescope Challenge, a web-based observatory based by astrophysicist Gianluca Masi of the Bellatrix Astronomical Observatory in Ceccano, Italy, hosted a dwell webcast in regards to the asteroid throughout the shut encounter right now. You may watch a replay right here at the Virtual Telescope Project’s website.
Video: Giant Asteroid 1998 HL1 Seen by Virtual Telescope Project
Associated: Potentially Dangerous Asteroids (Images)
Gianluca Masi of the Digital Telescope Challenge captured this picture of the doubtless hazardous asteroid 1998 HL1 on Oct. 23, 2019, at 1:41 p.m. EDT (1741 GMT), when the asteroid was about four.1 million miles (6.6 million kilometers) away from Earth. The picture comes from a single 300-second publicity captured remotely utilizing the Digital Telescope Challenge’s Elena telescope. The telescope tracked the asteroid’s motion, so the asteroid seems as a white dot in entrance of a background of star trails.
NASA classifies asteroid 1998 HL1 as “probably hazardous” as a result of the area rock has the “potential to make threatening shut approaches to the Earth.” That does not imply the asteroid poses a menace this time round. The company defines all asteroids whose orbits across the solar come inside four.6 million miles (7.eight million km) of Earth’s orbit, and which have a diameter of at the very least 500 ft (meters) as “probably hazardous asteroids.”
Asteroid 1998 HL1 measures about 1,800 ft (550 m) in diameter, or in regards to the top of the Sears Tower in Chicago, according to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “This may make it fairly vivid across the time of the flyby,” Masi wrote in a description of today’s webcast.
This sky chart from the Digital Telescope Challenge exhibits the trail of asteroid 1998 HL1 by way of the night time sky from Oct. 25 to Oct. 28. (Click on the highest proper nook of the picture to increase it.)
In the present day’s flyby would be the closest one till Oct. 26, 2140, when it is going to be simply barely nearer to Earth at a distance of three.84 million miles (6.18 million km). So, 1998 HL1 will not pose an actual menace to Earth for the foreseeable future.
E mail Hanneke Weitering at hweitering@area.com or observe her @hannekescience. Observe us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
