The giant asteroid in question (465824) known as 2010 FR, which will form the closest position to our planet on September 6, is 162 meters in diameter, the asteroid in question is measuring the same height as the real giant – Blackpool Tower and twice the size of Big Ben. And it’s not only huge, it’s also exceptionally fast – traveling a full 14 kilometers per second.
Thanks to us, the 2010 FR will reach about .5.5 million kilometers from Earth, but the giant space still sparks the interest of astronomers.
As the asteroid approached Earth on September 4, researchers on the Virtual Telescope project sank in steps to take some action shots of a nearby space rock.
The asteroid was more than 7.8 million kilometers away at the time of the image, which was certainly an impressive spot.
The Virtual Telescope Project said: “The telescope carefully tracked the apparent motion of the asteroid, resulting in long paths, while the asteroid looks like a sharp point of light in the center of the image. It is marked by an arrow.
“The full moon wasn’t too far into the sky, so the image was taken under less than ideal conditions: despite this, the asteroid 2010 FR is well visible.
“At the time of imaging, the asteroid (465824) 2010 FR was about 7.8 million kilometers away from Earth and it was slowly reaching us.”
NASA has described the asteroid as “potentially dangerous” even after it traveled 19 times the distance between Earth and the Moon.
The term ‘potentially dangerous’ refers to the idea that somewhere in the history of the solar system an asteroid could collide with the Earth depending on its future orbit.
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“Scientific interest in comets and astronomy is largely due to the relatively unchanged remnants of the formation of the solar system about 6.6 billion years ago.
“The massive outer planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune) are made up of billions of comets, and the left-over bits and fragments from this formation process are the comets we see today.
“Similarly, today’s asteroids are the bits and fragments that come from the primary aggregates of the underlying planets Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars.”
