Asteroid 1998 OR2 safely passing earth TODAY!

An asteroid over 1 mile (2km) wide passes relatively close to Earth, today April 29 2020.

While Asteroid 1998 OR2 is considered a “close approach” by astronomers, it it still very far away: The asteroid will come to about 3.9 million miles (6.3 million kilometres) away, passing more than 16 times farther away than the Moon.

The Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico has been tracking the asteroid, after Nasa first spotted it in 1998.

The asteroid is classed as a PHO (potentially hazardous object) because it is bigger than 140 metres and will come within five million miles of Earth’s orbit. It does not pose an immediate danger to the planet. Nevertheless, it is important to keep studying it, to understand its properties and to see how it will move beyond 2020.

Don’t have your own, super powerful telescope? Follow it through the virtual telescope project! And have a look here for more information.

IAC, a NEOROCKS project partner, have also been following this interesting target. In the video below, made of a sequence of 2 hours, you can see the asteroid moving in the field of view.

Images were obtained on the night of April 26, using the TAR telescope (46 cm) located at the Teide Observatory, in the Canary Islands, managed by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias.

 

 

Photograph: @AreciboRadar/Twitter/PA