Monday, May 5, 2014

Close Approach of Asteroid 2014 HO132

The asteroid 2014 HO132 was discovered (at magnitude ~19.6) on 2014, April 28.4 by F51 Pan-STARRS 1, Haleakala survey.

2014 HO132 has an estimated size of 19 m - 42 m (based on the object's absolute magnitude H=25.7) and it had a close approach with Earth at about 2.1 LD (Lunar Distances = ~384,000 kilometers) or 0.0055 AU (1 AU = ~150 million kilometers) at 0810 UT on 2014, May 05. This asteroid reached the peak magnitude ~15.6 on May 04, 2014.

We performed some follow-up measurements of this object on 2014, May 05.5, remotely from the Q62 iTelescope network (Siding Spring) through a 0.50-m f/6.8 astrograph + CCD + f/4.5 focal reducer.

Below you can see our image taken with the asteroid at magnitude ~16.4 and moving at ~135.47 "/min. At the moment of its close approach at 0810 UT, 2014 HO132 was moving at ~141 "/min. Click on the image below to see a bigger version. North is up, East is to the left (the asteroid is trailed in the image due to its fast speed).


Below you can see a short animation showing the movement of 2014 HO132 (three consecutive 90-second exposure). Click on the thumbnail for a bigger version:



UPDATE - May 08, 2014

Asteroid 2014 HO132 was observed on May 03, 2014 by radar at Goldstone. Below you can find the radar images, sums of fifteen consecutive runs at a resolution of 3.75 m x 0.11 Hz resolution (click on it for a bigger version).

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/GSSR

by Ernesto Guido, Nick Howes & Martino Nicolini

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