Two asteroids passed close to Earth this week. As space agencies around the world report, this rare event coincides with today’s celebration of International Asteroid Day.
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Perspective is key: Week 26 photosOne of them is the asteroid “2024 MK”. With a diameter of about 200 meters, it passed its closest point to Earth yesterday at 9:46 a.m. German time, at a distance of 300,000 kilometers. Since then, it has increased the distance again. At the time of approach, the asteroid could be seen as a bright point with simple binoculars in many parts of the world, for example in the US southwest. “The object is moving quickly,” said Juan Luis Cano, a member of the Planetary Defense Office of the European Space Agency (ESA).
2024 MK was discovered just two weeks ago
Researchers discovered this asteroid only on June 16. The fact that they observed such a large celestial body only shortly before the flyby underlines the need to improve capabilities for monitoring potentially hazardous near-Earth objects, ESA stressed.
The second asteroid is called “2011 UL21” and is the larger of the two. With a diameter of 2.3 kilometers, it is larger than 99 percent of all known Near-Earth Objects (NEOs), according to the ESA. Its closest point to Earth last Thursday was 17 times farther than the Moon. It can only be seen with powerful telescopes.
Like a news portal th Reportedly, the approach of asteroids of this size is rare and, according to the Virtual Telescope Project, happens on average every ten years. Even if the New York Times has already described two cosmic visitors Killer asteroidThere was no threat to Earth from both the celestial bodies.
(US)
Light in landscape photography: Photography No 4/2024
