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Small asteroid passed extremely close earlier today - EarthSky

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A long exposure photo of a star field. The asteroid, which is moving in front of the stars, appears as a dot. An arrow points to it.

View larger. | Near-Earth asteroid 2020 OY4 on July 27, 2020. At the imaging time, the asteroid about 155,000 miles (250,000 km) from Earth, two-thirds of the lunar distance, and it was still safely approaching us. Image via the Virtual Telescope Project.

Gianluca Masi of the Virtual Telescope Project reports from Rome, Italy. Article re-printed with permission.

Earlier today (July 28, 2020), near-Earth asteroid 2020 OY4 had a extremely close, but safe, encounter with our planet, reaching a minimum distance from the Earth of about 26,000 miles (42,000 km), less than 11% of the average distance of the moon. We managed to capture its image as it swept past.

This space rock is estimated to be about 7.5 to 17 feet (2.3 to 5.2 meters) across. It reached its minimum distance from us earlier today on July 28, 2020, at 05:32 UTC (translate UTC to your time). Of course, there were no risks at all to our planet. According to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory:

Space rocks smaller than about 25 meters (about 82 feet) will most likely burn up as they enter the Earth’s atmosphere and cause little or no damage.

If a rocky meteoroid larger than 25 meters but smaller than one kilometer ( a little more than 1/2 mile) were to hit Earth, it would likely cause local damage to the impact area.

The Mt. Lemmon survey discovered the asteroid on July 26, 2020.

The image above comes from a single, 120-seconds exposure, remotely taken with the “Elena” (PlaneWave 17?+Paramount ME+SBIG STL-6303E) robotic unit available at Virtual Telescope.

The telescope tracked the fast apparent motion of the asteroid, this is why stars show as long trails, while the asteroid looks like a bright and sharp dot of light in the center of the image, marked by an arrow.

17-inch telescope in front of a telescope shelter.

The Planevawe 17?-f/6.8 (432/2939 mm) Corrected Dall-Kirkham Astrograph telescope of the Virtual Telescope Project was used to capture the image above of asteroid 2020 OY4. It is named “Elena” for Gianluca Masi’s mother. Read more about this telescope.

Bottom line: Image and information about asteroid 2020 OY4, which swept within 11% of the moon’s distance on July 28, 2020.

Help Support The Virtual Telescope Project! Its fund-raiser is going on now. Please, click here to donate and receive unique, LIMITED EDITION set of images of stunning Potentially Hazardous Asteroid 1998 OR2, images of the International Space Station above Rome and more, specifically made for supporters like you!

EarthSky’s yearly crowd-funding campaign is also in progress. In 2020, we are donating 8.5% of all incoming revenues to No Kids Hungry. Click to learn more and donate.

Gianluca Masi

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Small asteroid passed extremely close earlier today - EarthSky
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