Astronomers release even more images of the asteroid that buzzed Earth

Earlier this calendar week , a hunk of rock called asteroid 2005 YU55 make out within smashing aloofness of Earth . It was purport to be the sizing of an aircraft carrier , and wound up flying by us at a distance of just under 200,000 miles , much closer than the Moon .

But as close as the asteroid come up to Earth , it seems the best we ’ve get by to develop imaging - knowing are highly pixelated images like the ones up top ( alright , so the one in the middle is in reality fairly decent , with a resolving of about 4 m / pixel … although my favorite is the one on the far right , which I ’m still not convinced is n’t in reality a fuzzy picture of peanut M&M ) . But you have to think of these images were captured using radio scope ( well , the first two were — the M&M is actually the first optical / skinny - infrared prototype of the asteroid , but we ’ll get to that in a minute ) .

Radio telescopes work out a lot like a main road patrolman ’s radar gun , only they work over C of thousands of kilometers and they ’re actually exact . By channelize poor heartbeat of focussed radio waves at the asteroid and await for them to take a hop back , radio scope like theAricebo radio telescope(which captured the persona of the asteroid on the far impart back in 2010 ) , and the deep - space connection antenna atthe Goldstone observatory(which resolved the image of 2005 YU55 sport in the middle ) can find out everything from the asteroid ’s size , to its shape , to its rotation in blank space .

In fact , it was with the Goldstone telescope that NASA create this 6 - frame moving picture of the asteroid when it was still on its approach , at a distance of 860,000 mi away from Earth .

So what ’s the pot with the Peanut M&M ? Well , that image was beguile bythe Keck II telescopein Kamuela , Hawaii , by discover near - infrared photons from asteroid YU55 just a couple of hours after the asteroid passed its point of closest approach to Earth . And while this ( still unprocessed ) picture might not depend like much , we can actually discover a slew from it . For example , the mental image seems to confirm that the asteroid has no small fellow traveller satellite . It also designate that the asteroid has a shape more like a potato than a sphere , and that the rock — long think to be around 400 meter across — is probably confining to 240 meters . So only half an aircraft carrier .

In any case , the raw mental imagery of 2005 YU55 captured at the Keck lookout station wo n’t be done processing for at least a few more days , but when it is scientists are hoping they ’ll have enough information to develop some cool raw images of the careen , and maybe even a 3D thought . In the meantime , here ’s a diminished collection of some of the asteroid footage captured by stargazers around the ball .

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This video was created from hundreds of images , capture by Mike Renzi at the Starhoo Observatory in Massachusetts .

This image was catch byDavid Cortnerof Rutherford College , NC . Cortner writes : “ Here ’s a tidy sum of 30 second exposures demonstrate this 1200 foot charcoal briquet zooming through the stars of Pegasus … stacked the little frames then added color datum after the asteroid leave the theatre . ”

A similar image , by Chris Cook in Cape Cod , MA . Cook writes : “ I was able to beguile Asteroid 2005 YU55 as it made its near approach to Earth on Novemeber 8 , 2011 . My image was take between 6:52 - 6:57pm EST . It was much fainter than I thought it would be … . but it sure is moving tight ! ”

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