Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Near Earth Asteroid 2010 AL30

On January 13, 2010 an 'object' whizzed past Earth just 1/3 the distance to the moon. It turned out to be a small asteroid about 10 meters across. Had it hit Earth, it would have likely burned up very brightly in the atmosphere.

The night before closest approach I was able to image it. I put together several dozen 5 second exposures to make this movie. It comes in from the left side of the field near the center moving right. Actual time it took to travel through the frame was about 4 minutes. It's hard to see, because it was the size of a house 80,000 miles away!

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