Two small asteroids (2010 RF12 & 2010 RX30) will pass within the Moon's distance of Earth today, September 08, 2010. Both objects were discovered by the professional "Catalina Sky Survey" on September 05, 2010 with the 1.5-m telescope at Mount Lemmon in Arizona.
According to Nasa JPL website, 2010 RX30 has a value of H=27.1 and is estimated to be 10 to 20 meters in size and will pass within 0.6 lunar distances of Earth (about 248,000 km) at 9:51 Greenwich standard time. While 2010 RF12 With an absolute magnitude of H=28.1 is estimated to be 6 to 14 meters in size will pass within 0.2 lunar distances (79,000 km) a few hours later at 21:12 Greenwich standard time.
Although both objects are coming inside the orbit of the Moon, there is no danger of impact!! (anyway objects of these dimensions would mostly burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere in case of an impact)
We have been able to follow-up 2010 RF12 few hours ago, on September 08 at at 06:45am UT (00:45am local time) through the GRAS network, using a scope located in Mayhill (NM). Below you can see our animation composed of 4 unfiltered exposures, 30-seconds each obtained by means of a 0.25-m, f/3.4 reflector + CCD:
Click on the thumbnail for a bigger version
While below you can see a single 120-second exposure showing the asteroid as a trail among the field stars:
When we shoot our image this rock was speeding at about 31 deg/day, shining at about magnitude 15.
By Ernesto Guido & Giovanni Sostero
11 comments:
Cool!
Where is Ben Affleck?!?!?!?
I think I can see it. current time 0:30 Sydney Australia.
What relative magnitude will this reach at its peak?
@gehrehmee:
the relative max. magnitude for both objects is ~15mag and now fading
Maybe one day we'll be able to do more than watch asteroids potentially end civilizations. Wouldn't that be exciting.
personally i think we should attempt to capture these small near earth objects for research
Well done guys, Nice shooting!!!
Cool!!!
Congratulation and good luck in your asteroid hunting.
20m diameter iron meteor will burn up? Just what is the smallest size to reach the ground? Starts off big then burns down to size so how big does it hae to start to reach the ground?
WoW!!!
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