Asteroid 1998 OR2
A big – very big – asteroid passed relatively close to Earth this morning (April 29, 2020). Asteroid (52768) 1998 OR2 passed at a safe distance, at some 4 million miles (6 million km), or about 16 times the Earth-moon distance. It’s the biggest asteroid to fly by Earth this year (that we know about so far); according to current estimates, it’s probably a bit over a mile wide (2 km) and mostly spherical. Closest approach was April 29 around 4:56 a.m. Central Daylight Time (09:56 UTC). An online viewing of the asteroid from the Virtual Telescope Project in Rome, Italy – originally scheduled for April 28 – has been rescheduled due to clouds last night. The new time for the online viewing is today (April 29, 2020) starting at 1:30 p.m. Central Daylight Time (18:30 UTC)
Professional observatories have been pointing their telescopes at the huge space rock already. Amateur astronomers with smaller telescopes have also been viewing it as a slow-moving “star.” We have a few more charts and tips for observers at the bottom in this post.
Gianluca Masi of the Virtual Telescope Project also acquired 166 images of the asteroid – collected back to back – and assembled them to make the animated gif below. The animation shows you the asteroid’s motion in front of the stars. It was made with images from the Elena robotic unit of the Virtual Telescope Project in Rome, Italy. The asteroid is in the center of the image, visible as a sharp dot of light.
Orbit of asteroid (52768) 1998 OR2. It requires 3 years and 8 months to orbit the sun once. It gets nearly as far from the sun as Jupiter (about 5 times Earth’s distance from the sun). Image via NASA/ JPL.
