A space rock is streaking through the sky in fresh imagery captured just before the asteroid makes a safe flyby of Earth.
The Virtual Telescope Project imaged the skyscraper-size asteroid 2022 RM4 in space when it was just over 1.9 million miles (3.1 million km) from our planet on Oct. 31, ahead of an expected live broadcast today (Nov. 1) at 1 p.m. EDT (1700 GMT).
The asteroid poses no threat to our planet and will make a safe flyby at 2:26 p.m. EDT (18:26 GMT) at six times the equivalent distance to the moon.
"The picture above comes from a single 120-second exposure," wrote project founder Gianluca Masi about the photo, which was captured using a PlaneWave 17-inch telescope. Since the telescope was capturing the motion of the asteroid against the background stars, he explained, the stars appear as streaks so that the space rock is imaged as a sharp point in space.
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The closest approach by 2022 RM4 will see the asteroid come within 1.43 million miles (2.3 million kilometers) of Earth. That's far away in human terms, but by the size of the universe it is rather small.
With a diameter of somewhere between 1,083 and 2,428 feet (330 and 740 meters), the asteroid is just under the equivalent height of Dubai's 2,716-foot-tall (828 m) Burj Khalifa, which is the tallest building in the world.
NASA assigns the term "potentially hazardous" to any asteroid coming within 4.65 million miles (7.5 million km) of our planet. It's not a term for worry, but more for study; tagging such space rocks means they are more closely examined by astronomers to keep an eye on their orbits.
Sunlight and gravity can push around asteroids and over time, greatly change their path through space. That said, none of the tens of thousands of asteroids tracked by the agency pose a threat in the next 100 years, although the search continues as a precaution.
Elizabeth Howell is the co-author of "Why Am I Taller?" (ECW Press, 2022; with Canadian astronaut Dave Williams), a book about space medicine. Follow her on Twitter @howellspace. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.
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