Skip to content

Massive Asteroid BL86 Approaches Earth

Mountain-sized asteroid BL86 (also known as 357439) came hurtling towards its near-miss with earth today, and I caught it on my camera. Here's the time-lapse video, both an edge to edge 16:9 crop at 200mm, then a second copy cropped to 1080p. Look in the center as it moves from lower right center to upper left center:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKQ6mEdoAkU&list=PL6012D9822C1BA1E7

Both were assembled from 119 separate images of the sky, taken with a full frame DSLR and 70-200 mm lens, on a star-tracking mount. The evening sky is becoming bright with the moonlight, so I lowered the they ISO sensitivity to 2000. I tried a second camera using an 85mm lens at f/2.2 without a tracking mount, but I probably won't get to that footage this week so see whether the asteroid shows up well..

#science #news #astronomy #astrophotography #nightphotography
www.JeffSullivanPhotography.com

Comments

12 thoughts on “Massive Asteroid BL86 Approaches Earth”

  1. Most of us sit here and read this info and find it impossible to comprehend such a thing could ever happen. I appreciate your wonderful photos and the "story" behind them. I feel privileged to have access to your posts.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Loading Facebook Comments ...