Asteroid 2012 KT42 Buzzes the earth, the sixth closest approach on record!! inside 30,000 Klms. (2 Hours ago) Everyone's on this tonight our good friends over at Remanzacco Observatory have an excellent article on the passage.
I took two 20 Sec images, taken about 40 minutes apart , the second image is very close to MOID (closest approach) where it was traveling at a phenomenal 890 arcsecs per minute, it was just over ~200 Arc secs per minute in the first image. NOTE: the platescales are the same - checkout the acceleration in just 40 mins. Actually I took 15 image of which only three had the asteroid in them - that's how fast it was going. I'm sure someone else will have a tracking image, unfortunately I didn't have time to set that up properly, so I just have two nice trailing images.
Images are time stamped in UT & the positions are: 2012 KT MOID-40m 15:58:31 -16:08:15 2012 KT MOID 15:38:05 -12:20:50 Observatory H06 (note the MOID is just in the file name for the position at the top of the hour of MOID and not the exact MOID)
It amazing what a robotic telescope can do while you are driving home in city traffic!!!!
"But officer I was on hands free" ;-) !!!!
Seriously though it was all pre-programed and I downloaded the images when I got home.
Later tonight observers in South Asia may be a chance to see it transit the sun in a warm up for the Venus Transit next week.
[Updated: European's have an interesting definition of "South" Asia ;-) it missed by 2 degrees - anyway we got good photos at closest approach]
If my good friends in India manage to capture it at 10:10 UT, We'll bring photos here
Peter Lake "Astroswanny"
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