A new light upon asteroid give our major planet a close brush last nighttime — and in what may be an astronomical first , observers managed to film the outer space rock pass in and out of Earth ’s shadow .
2016 VA , an object more or less the duration of a commercial bus , was discovered yesterday by the Mount Lemmon Sky Survey in Arizona , and later by the International Astronomical Union’sMinor Planet Center . A few 60 minutes after its discovery , at 8:42 PM ET , it zipped past our planet , come within 47,000 naut mi ( 75,000 km ) at closest feeler . That ’s just 20 percent of the distance between Earth and the Moon .
Many dozens of space rocks reach within branch ’s length of our planet each year , but last night ’s celestial intruder was rather exceptional . The Virtual Telescope Project , a series of automatonlike and remotely - master telescope run by stargazer Gianluca Masi of the of the Bellatrix Astronomical Observatory in Italy , managed to catch stunning footage of 2016 VA careening toward us .
In a blog post , Masi explainshow the mental image above was captured :
A 60 - second exposure , remotely taken with “ Elena ” ( PlaneWave 17″+Paramount ME+SBIG STL-6303E robotic unit of measurement ) usable at Virtual Telescope . The machinelike mount cross the extremely fast ( 570″/minute ) apparent apparent movement of the asteroid , so whizz are trail . The asteroid is absolutely tracked : it is the sharp dot in the middle , score with two white section . At the imaging time , asteroid 2016 VA was at about 200.000 km from us and draw close .
Getting such a frosty view of a fast - moving asteroid is telling enough , but that ’s not all the Virtual Telescope Project care to do . Its footage of 2016 VA include what Masi believes to be the very first picture of an asteroid hybridize into Earth ’s umbra , or shadow , and becoming full eclipsed by our major planet . This uncommon transit began just before the contrary space rock ’s closest approach , at 7:23 PM ET , and lasted about 11 minute .
Here ’s a sped - up version of the action at law :
For anyone wondering what it ’d be like to hobble a drive on an asteroid through Earth ’s shadow , the Virtual Telescope Project has even put together a niftyorbital simulator . Alien passengers aboard 2016 VA would have experienced a brief solar occultation , as our major planet passed between the sun and their cold , rocky vessel .
With the asteroid not slated for another nigh encounter with Earth this century , it would ’ve been a sight to lay eyes on .
chastening : An earlier interpretation of this post wrong equated 58,000 miles with 75,000 klick . The author , a big fan of doing math correctly , is appropriately embarrassed .
[ Virtual TelescopeviaUniverse Today ]
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