(ORDO NEWS) — Italian astronomer Gianluca Masi managed to photograph a huge asteroid as it approached our planet for the first time in 90 years.
The cosmic body has a diameter of 1052 meters, which is much larger than the height of the Burj Khalifa – the tallest building on Earth, which is located in Dubai and reaches 828 meters. Before that, a potentially dangerous asteroid flew up to Earth in 1933. Then the distance was about 1 million 120 thousand kilometers.
The asteroid was named 7482 (1994 PC1). NASA officials classify it as a potentially dangerous object, despite the fact that in this case it flew past the Earth at a relatively safe distance. The next time the asteroid will approach us is only in 2105.
The resulting images can be called unique. The object was moving at an incredibly high speed, so all the stars in the image are represented by long lines, and the huge asteroid itself looks like a white dot in the very center of the photo.
Asteroid 7482 (1994 PC1) orbits the Sun in 572 days. Experts recorded it 28 years ago. This cosmic body is a rocky asteroid, which astronomers attributed to the S-type.
It is worth paying attention to the fact that NASA is currently monitoring a huge number of space bodies. 28 thousand asteroids do not go unnoticed by experts.
All of them cross the orbit of our planet with a certain regularity. According to NASA forecasts, by the end of this month, 8 more asteroids will fly past the Earth at a minimum distance. At the same time, none of the objects will pose any threat to the planet and humanity.
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