Asteroid due to speed past Earth today will come almost as close as the moon (PHOTO)
Asteroid 2019 UM12, measuring up to 69 meters (230ft) in diameter and traveling at speeds of over 30,700 mph, will come closest to us at 17:41 UTC on November 7. Only discovered by NASA on October 24, the space rock has never passed through this neck of the cosmic woods before and likely won’t ever again.
Thankfully, folks operating powerful telescopes didn’t need that much of a heads-up to capture 2019 UM12 in all its glory.
#Asteroid#2019UM12 is safely coming as close as 487.000 km later today. We spotted it last night, here it is!@PopSci@AsteroidDay@b612foundation@SkyandTelescope@NEOShieldTeam@universetodayhttps://t.co/EwsDTc3Weepic.twitter.com/JE1BB2LnED
— Virtual Telescope (@VirtualTelescop) November 8, 2019
This image shows the asteroid en route to our backyard. The motion-tracking technology used to get a decent photo of the asteroid resulted in the stars in the background extending out into long trails while the asteroid appears as singular, bright dot at a distance of roughly 1.15 million kilometers from the Earth.
The asteroid measures some 3.7 times bigger than the space rock which buzzed the Earth at half the lunar distance on November 4.
Also on rt.com Incoming! Asteroid spotted a week ago to speed between Earth and Moon
Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!
Dear readers and commenters,
We have implemented a new engine for our comment section. We hope the transition goes smoothly for all of you. Unfortunately, the comments made before the change have been lost due to a technical problem. We are working on restoring them, and hoping to see you fill up the comment section with new ones. You should still be able to log in to comment using your social-media profiles, but if you signed up under an RT profile before, you are invited to create a new profile with the new commenting system.
Sorry for the inconvenience, and looking forward to your future comments,
RT Team.