Asteroid 2023 EY will pass very close to Earth soon, without posing a danger to us. On Friday (17), at 8:35 a.m. Brasilia time, the space rock will be about 239,000 km from our planet, which is 62% of the average distance between Earth and the Moon.
It was discovered on March 13 by the Atlas survey, an asteroid early warning system consisting of two telescopes in Hawaii, one in Chile and one in South Africa. Together, they scan the sky several times each night for moving objects.
This is how asteroid 2023 EY was revealed. Initial estimates put the asteroid’s diameter between 13 and 29 meters; Therefore, it appears to be the same size as the Chelyabinsk meteorite, which exploded over Russia in 2013.
Asteroids are rocks left over from the formation of the solar system about 4.6 billion years ago. In the case of 2023 EY, it is an Apollo-class asteroid, that is, it has an orbit wider than Earth’s orbit around the Sun, and its trajectory intersects our planet.
It is part of NASA’s list of asteroids to watch. There, space rocks will be relatively close to Earth, that is, those that will be less than 7.5 million km from our planet (a distance equivalent to 19.5 times the area of the Moon).
How to observe asteroid 2023 EY
You will be able to follow the asteroid’s passage through the Virtual Telescope Project, which will show live images of the space rock 12 hours before the flyby.
Transmission begins on Thursday (16), at 21:00 (Brasilia time), and will be shown on The project Location and on the YouTube channel.
Source: via: virtual telescope
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