Grosseto, 27 June 2024 – This evening, at 10.16 pm Italian time, there will be the close pass dell’asteroid 2011 UL21, among the ten largest to have passed within 7.5 million kilometers of Earth since 1900. No danger to our planet, just a great show that will be broadcast live streaming on the ANSA Science Channel starting at 10 pm thanks to the robotic telescopes of the Virtual Telescope Project installed at MancianoNeighbor Grosseto.
Artistic representation of two near-Earth asteroids (source: ESA – P.Carril)
“Thanks to the purity of the starry sky free from light pollution of the whole of peninsular Italy, we will be able to image the asteroid which, from a geometric point of view, will be visible even if the ideal conditions for observation will be available starting from Friday”, states the astrophysicist Gianluca Masiscientific director of the Virtual Telescope.
Astrophysicist Gianluca Masi
Asteroid 2011 UL21, discovered on October 17, 2011 by the Catalina Sky Survey, has a diameter of 2,310 meters and is larger than 99% of all known near-Earth objects (NEOs). However, it will not get too close to our planet: it will pass at a distance of 6.6 million kilometers, 17 times farther than the Moon. The event is still not to be missed, as Masi explains.
“By analyzing the list of flybys by these bodies, made available by the Center for Near Earth Object Studies (Cneos) of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, it can be concluded that, after this rendezvous, 2011 UL21 will be among the top ten most largest ever to have passed within 7.5 million kilometers of the Earth from 1 January 1900 to the present”.
Smaller but equally spectacular it will be l’asteroide 2024 MK who will greet the Terra on June 29 at 3:46 PM Italian time: with a diameter between 120 and 260 meters, it will pass 290,000 kilometers from our Planet (about 75% of the Earth-Moon distance) “becoming one of the brightest objects of its kind ever seen in recent history”, concludes Masi.
