Researchers have recently reported an orbiting asteroid at a speed of 19.000 mph, whose height was almost half as tall as Mount Everest. The asteroid will be the closest to our planet on the 29th of April. It shines so bright that the ground telescopes can already spot it with ease.
On the 15th of April, the astrophysicist Gianluca Masi managed to place for the first time the asteroid during the Virtual Telescope Project. He even managed to stick together 166 images to create an animation video of the asteroid, offering to the sky-watchers an actual representation of it.
Even though in the video, it seems like a tiny dot flying in the outer space, the astronomers have stated that it measures between 1.11 miles and 2.54 miles. In addition to this, its moving speed is around 8.7 kilometers per second.
As a comparison, the asteroid known in the history as the one responsible for the elimination of the dinosaurs on the Earth was around six miles.
Asteroid OR2 will pass next to Earth on the 29th of April
The images captured by Dr. Masi were taken when the asteroid was orbiting at approximately 7.45 million miles away from Earth.
The closest approach towards our planet is going to take place on the 29th of April; this is why one day prior, Dr. Masi will set his Virtual Telescope towards asteroid OR2 to analyze the asteroid from a closer angle. He underlines that there is no reason to be threatened since the asteroid is nowhere near as close as to threaten our planet.
The “close” passage reached by an outer space object is very far away in human terms. The asteroid OR2 is considered a near-Earth object because it orbits the Sun at a distance of about 1.3 astronomical units.
However, only one astronomical unit is 93 million miles. Even though the asteroid OR2 will pass by the Earth at a distance of 3.9 million miles, it is one of the most prominent objects to be that close to our planet in the past year.
