Astroblog: NEO 2012 OQ zips past IC5067

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

NEO 2012 OQ zips past IC5067


Close up of NEO asteroid 2012 OQ as it zooms past	Full field of view with IC5067, the asteroid is a bit difficult to see, but it is near the middle, click to embiggen, it's worth it

Asteroid 2012 OQ is a is a 195 m diameter rock that comes within 7.7 Earth-Moon distances of us. It is closest on July 24 at 18:23 UT (that's 4:23 am 25 July AEST). But it's also getting dim then.

I shot the asteroid using iTelescope T5 earlier this evening when it was close to the nebula IC 5067. Sadly I lost over half of my images to drifting cloud, but I wasn't alone in this. Still, I think it came out rather well with the frames I did get (4x120 sec images stretched in FITSliberator, stacked in ImageJ and despeckeled. While the asteroid is dimmer than 2012 LZ1 the nebula more than makes up for it.

Here's a slightly sad animation I made.

Labels: asteroids, iTelescope, NEO