Asteroid 2005YU55 – Close Pass with Earth
by Mike Hankey, under Comets & Meteors
A very large asteroid, 2005YU55 passed by Earth Tuesday November 8th . It reached its peak closeness around 6:30 PM that evening. I made an attempt at photographing it, but failed due to technical reasons. I later found a post explaining the procedure I needed to execute and I was able to successful target, track and photograph the asteroid the following night.
Here’s a short animated gif of the asteroid while it is being tracked. The asteroid is the little dot in the center and the long lines moving are stars. Each exposure is 30 seconds long. The asteroid was only a few degrees from the near full moon and it was also pretty cloudy, so the image is hurt by this, but hey, the asteroid is still there!
Here is a youtube version of the asteroid sequence above, but just with more frames.
Here’s another animated gif of the asteroid. This time the stars are being tracked, so they are stationary as the asteroid flies across the field of view. Each frame in this clip is a one minute exposure.
Here is a youtube version of the asteroid sequence above, but just with more frames.
Both of these videos were taken November 9th, 2011 between 8 and 10 PM EST using an RCOS 14.5 telescope.
If you are searching for information on the 11/11/11 meteor, you don’t need to worry about 2005YU55. Its gone and won’t be impacting Earth anytime soon.
Here’s a good article about the asteroid with a map of its path relative to Earth and also a 3d video close-up of the asteroid obtained using a radio telescope.
http://news.discovery.com/space/nasa-makes-a-movie-asteroid-2005-yu55-in-radar-111109.html
and here’s a pretty good Australian news program about this asteroid and NEOs in general.