One of the earth’s closest encounters with an asteroid in recent years takes place Monday afternoon. NASA says the encounter is so close that Earth’s gravity will sharply alter the asteroid’s trajectory and prevent the space rock from impacting the planet.
2011MD, a newly discovered asteroid will pass within 12,000 kilometres (7,500 miles) of Earth. The asteroid, measuring about 16 feet to 35 feet, was sighted for the first time last Wednesday by a robotic telescope in New Mexico, USA. The International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center in Massachusetts, USA, put out an alert Thursday.
It will be daylight in the UK and Ireland (12.30 GMT) when the asteroid makes passes over the southern Atlantic Ocean, near the coast of Antarctica.
The event will be observable from South Africa and parts of Antarctica. It also will be visible in the hours leading up to the closest approach across Australia, New Zealand, southern and eastern Asia, and the western Pacific.
According to Sky & Telescope magazine: The farther south you are, the better. The farther west you are within this zone, the shorter the period of visibility, but the closer to Earth the asteroid will be when it disappears. The asteroid peaks brighter than magnitude 11.0 at the places where the closest approach is visible, and it’s already about magnitude 12.5 — fairly easy to spot in an 8-inch telescope — by 14:30 UT, 2½ hours before closest approach. At that point it’s visible from Southeast Asia, eastern China, and Japan, as well as Australia and points between”, the magazine reported Sunday.
When word spread about the approaching asteroid 2011 MD, Peter Birtwhistle used his 16-inch (0.4-m) f/6 Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope to capture it. Each of these two frames is a combination of five 20-second exposures, taken on June 23, 2011, from 1:41 to 1:45 Universal Time. Peter Birtwhistle / Great Shefford Obs. Image via Sky % Telescope
