Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Asteroid 2007 TU24 Close Approach Video

Asteroid 2007 TU24, discovered by the Catalina Sky Survey on October 11, 2007 has closely approached the Earth to within 1.4 lunar distances (334,000 miles) on 2008 Jan. 29 08:33 UT. 

We have observed this object from Remanzacco Observatory with a 45cm f/4.4 reflector and CCD FLI IMG 1001E. Below You can find our video composed of 100 images x 2 seconds showing this asteroid (magnitude 10) from 20h29m to 20h 45m UT.



2007 TU24 will be the closest currently known approach by a potentially hazardous asteroid of this size (between 150 and 600 meters in diameter) or larger until 2027.

Scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.,  "have obtained the first images of asteroid 2007 TU24 using high-resolution radar data. The data indicate the asteroid is somewhat asymmetrical in shape, with a diameter roughly 250 meters in size." Below you can see the low-resolution radar images of asteroid 2007 TU24 taken over a few hours by the Goldstone Solar System Radar Telescope in California's Mojave Desert. Image resolution is approximately 20-meters per pixel.


Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
 

Giovanni Sostero, Luca Donato & Ernesto Guido

2 comments:

Juan Antonio Henríquez Santana said...

Hola,

Un gran video de este PHA,

Felicidades
Juan A.Henríquez
http://atlante.org.es

Giovanni Sostero said...

¡gracias Juan, es un comentario muy apreciado, desde él los cames de usted!
Saludos
Giovanni Sostero