Footage Shows Near-Miss Earth Flyby of Asteroid 2023 BU

DO you want know about Miss Earth Flyby of Asteroid 2023? During its close encounter with Earth on Thursday.

Gianluca Masi, who manages “The Virtual Telescope”(Opens in a new window), a network of actual robotic telescopes that allows internet users to observe the cosmos, provided the video. On Thursday afternoon PST, two hours prior to asteroid 2023 BU making its closest approach to Earth at a distance of 2,200 miles, Masi focused one of the telescopes at the object.

This makes it the fourth closest asteroid (approach) ever, according to a blog post by Masi(Opens in a new window). The asteroid was briefly closer to Earth than geosynchronous satellites fly because it was so close.

The asteroid was still about 23,000 miles distant from Earth when the photo above was taken. The majority of the time, the sky was foggy, making it difficult to image the event, he wrote. As a result, we frequently had to postpone our live feed.

Masi was also able to construct a film of the asteroid traversing the night sky by combining the photographs.

The asteroid is therefore so small that, even if it did strike our planet, it would probably burn up in the atmosphere without doing any harm. On the other hand, an asteroid that is at least one to two kilometres in size might seriously harm our world. Even greater ones might bring civilization to an end.

NASA’s asteroid tracker reports that 2023 BU has now passed the Moon’s orbit. (Opens in a new window) The rock will continue to circle the Sun in an extended orbit.