Photo of 2012 EG5 - a near-earth asteroid taken on 29 March 2012 using SSON's Riegel Telescope. This asteroid created a lot of media attention as it will pass inside the Moon's orbit. Earth Distance is estimated at about 230,000 km. Pretty close!
This photo was taken with 2x2 min exposure with 5 min interval. The asteroid is moving at approximately 4''/min.
2012 EG5 is Apollo. It briefly crosses Earth's orbit, while spending most of its time in the Main Belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.
Will we every see it again? JPL Minor Planet browser predicts that the closest it will get in the foreseeable future will be on 27-May-2034 - at about 11 million km and will reach +20 magnitude (very faint)
2012 EG5 is Apollo. It briefly crosses Earth's orbit, while spending most of its time in the Main Belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.
Will we every see it again? JPL Minor Planet browser predicts that the closest it will get in the foreseeable future will be on 27-May-2034 - at about 11 million km and will reach +20 magnitude (very faint)
Photometry from the Prompt telescopes last night in Chile analyzed by Petr Pravec revealed a period of 17.53 minutes and an amplitude of 0.35 magnitudes.
The analysis done by Franco Lorenzo (A81 Balzaretto, Observatory) revealed a period of P = 0.2924+/-0.0002 (17.544 min) amp. 0.40 mag. Here's the light curve:
This means that this asteroid is a rapid rotator and must be a solid body "the size of a school bus".
Last night's images start to appear in various blogs. My favorite is this Italian post:
and here's another good one:
http://www.slas.us/gallery2/main.php?g2_itemId=4920
04/01/2012
An image of 2012 EG5 made by Dennis Simmons in Australia:
04/06/2012
Lance Benner from JPL reported that the object could not be detected using Goldstone Radar on April 4th meaning that it is possibly smaller than originally estimated 50m size.
