On Tuesday, an asteroid with a diameter of over one kilometer will pass the Earth, approaching the Earth at a distance of almost two million kilometers. Closest to Earth will be on Tuesday, January 18 at 20:51 our time.
–
By comparison, the Webb telescope launched by NASA into space in December will operate at a distance of one and a half million kilometers. The moon is 384,000 kilometers from Earth. So it is one of the larger and closer asteroids that has passed Earth recently.
–
Unfortunately, its visibility, or luminosity, will be low. Tomáš Prosecký, director of the Štěfánik Observatory on Petřín in Prague, says that he will not be observable from Prague. “The asteroid will have a light magnitude of ten, which is one degree beyond what we can observe with our telescopes,” Prosecký told the News List.
–