Massive Asteroid BL86 Approaches Earth

Here's a composite photo to go with the time-lapse video I posted this morning of mountain-sized Asteroid 2004 BL46 (357439) as it approached earth last night. Fortunately this pass was a near-miss, coming no closer than 3X the distance to the moon. That's still very close in terms of the vastness of space, and it'll be interesting to see how close it comes on its next lap 8000 years from now.

This still image was assembled from the first 60 images I captured, the video clips from 119 separate images of the sky. Click on my name to see all of my posts to see my post this morning with the video. I also posted photos and video of Comet Lovejoy in recent days.

The sequences of photos of the asteroid last night were taken with a full frame DSLR and 70-200 mm lens, on a star-tracking mount. The evening sky is becoming bright with the moonlight, so I lowered the they ISO sensitivity to 2000. I tried a second camera using an 85mm lens at f/2.2 without a tracking mount, but I probably won't get to that footage this week so see whether the asteroid shows up well.

#science #astronomy #news #astrophotography #537439
www.JeffSullivanPhotography.com