Time-lapse video of near-Earth Asteroid 2002 AM31 on July 22nd from Slooh’s Canary Islands observatory.
Discovered by Lincoln Near Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR), NEA (Near-Earth Asteroid) 2002 AM31, an asteroid the size of a city block, made its close approach to Earth last Sunday evening (July 22) – just 39 days after newly discovered Asteroid 2012 LZ1 paid an unexpected visit to Earth. The Slooh Space Camera covered its near-approach in a live event that was free to the public– accompanied by real-time discussions by Slooh’s President Patrick Paolucci and Astronomy Magazine columnist Bob Berman.
The asteroid is estimated to be 620m – 1.4 km meters (2,000 – 4,500 ft wide), and passed within 14 times the Moon’s distance from our planet. Due to its size and proximity to Earth, 2002 AM31 qualifies as a near-Earth object as it’s more than 500 feet wide and within 4.65 million miles of Earth.
Bob Berman says, “Instead of living on an “island Earth” with little or no connection with other celestial objects, we now feel that collisions with comets or asteroids change the evolution of our biosphere, and maybe even seeded our world with the amino acids that started life long ago. In other words, these are important entities. Not to mention, there’s always that exciting little hint of danger.”
“One of our missions at Slooh is to provide the public with free, live views on fascinating celestial happenings,” says Patrick Paolucci, President at Slooh. “Near-Earth Asteroid 153958 (2003 AM31) represents 1 of approximately 9,000 whizzing past Earth at any given moment and we wanted to highlight this one as it’s only 13.7 lunar distances from Earth – similar to Near-Earth Asteroid LZ1 which zoomed past us unexpectedly mid June.”
Below is some in-depth coverage of the event:
The Slooh Space Camera presented coverage of asteroid 2002 AM31 from Canary Islands observatory. With Patrick Paolucci, Bob Berman, Paul Cox, and Matt Francis.
Slooh offers celestial event programming with weekly shows featuring the great wonders of the Universe – shown live by observatories worldwide. SLOOH is powered by its members—men, women and children in 80 countries who have taken 1.7 million photos of 35,000 unique objects and events in the night sky since our launch on Christmas Day, 2003. Slooh’s instant imaging technology makes astronomical objects appear in true color and in real time over a 5 to 10 minute time frame.
Posted by: Soderman/NLSI Staff