Thank you for reading the news regarding technology: an astronomer takes pictures of a huge asteroid that reaches its closest point to Earth nearly 90 years ago and now with the details of the news
Cairo – Samia Sayed – An astronomer captured footage of a huge asteroid with a diameter of 3,451 feet, as it approached its closest point to Earth nearly 90 years ago, according to RT.
Asteroid 7482 (1994 PC1) can be considered as a small white dot as it moves towards our planet at regarding 19:00 GMT on Monday (17 January).
The following evening, at 21:51 GMT (16:51 EST) on January 18, the asteroid approached its closest point to Earth since 1933, coming within 1.2 million miles of our planet.
The clip was taken by Gianluca Massi, astrophysicist and project manager for the Virtual Telescope, provided by the Bellatrix Astronomical Observatory in Italy.
Eight more objects called Near Earth Objects (NEOs) are scheduled to safely pass through Earth this month, according to NASA.
Massey said: “We took many pictures of the potentially dangerous asteroid (7482) 1994 PC1, as it approached us safely. We made a beautiful still image and animation, and the telescope tracks the fast clear movement of the asteroid, which is why stars appear in the form of long paths , while the asteroid looks like a sharp point of light in the center of the image, marked by an arrow, and using all of the sequence images, we can make an animation, showing 1994 PC1 moving once morest the stars.”
NASA estimated Qatar asteroid 7482 (1994 PC1) at 3,451 feet (1,052 km), much larger than the tallest building on Earth, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, which is 2,722 feet tall.
After its close approach on Tuesday, 7482 (1994 PC1) will not be close to Earth once more until 2105, according to NASA JPL-Caltech Solar System Dynamics. Asteroid 7482 (1994 PC1), which orbits the Sun every 1.5 years, was first discovered in 1994 by astronomer RH McNutt, using Siding Spring Observatory in New South Wales, Australia.
Its orbit is well known, according to astronomers, and ranges from 0.9 AU to 1.8 AU, where 1 AU is the distance between the Earth and the Sun. It is a common rocky S-type asteroid, and each path nearby gives astronomers the opportunity to study the surface and learn more regarding these ancient space rocks.
NASA and other agencies regularly track more than 28,000 known asteroids as they orbit the sun, and sometimes through Earth’s orbit, and NASA says that none of the known asteroids is expected to collide with Earth at any time in the near future, but there are asteroids of unknown orbits.
The NASA Center for Near-Earth Object Studies monitors asteroids and other space objects, and defines 7482 (1994 PC1) as a Near-Earth Object (NEO) and a Potentially Hazardous Asteroid (PHA). According to NASA data available to people, as of Tuesday, 27,948 near-Earth objects have been detected.
It is estimated that there are regarding 25,000 near-Earth objects (NEOs) larger than 460 feet (140 meters).
There are also an estimated 1,000 NEOs larger than 3,280 feet (1 kilometer), highlighting the need to track these space rocks, and between January 20 and January 28, eight more objects will pass through Earth, according to NASA data.