It is expected that a close pass of an asteroid more than one kilometer in diameter at night between January 18 and 19, which will reach a speed of approximately 20 kilometers per second at a safe distance of approximately 2 million kilometers, 5 times the distance between the Earth and the Moon. The asteroid is known as (7482) 1994 PC1, and it will be visible in the sky even with the help of a small telescope. It is also possible to watch the clip on the ANSA Scienza e Tecnica channel, thanks to the live broadcast organized by virtual telescope It is 21.00 on January 18, with astrophysicist Gianluca Massi commenting.
Discovered by the Siding Spring Observatory in Australia in 1994, the asteroid has been tracked in great detail since then and its path around the sun is well known. It is a rocky asteroid with a diameter of more than a thousand meters, which is two and a half times that of the Empire State Building, and for the minimum dimensions and distances it can reach from Earth, it is included in the list of potentially dangerous asteroids, especially dangerous asteroids that are constantly and carefully monitored Special.
Reconstructing the path of asteroid PC1 1994 (Source: Phoenix7777 from Wikipedia)
The maximum approach point for the planet is fixed at 22:51 Italian time, but it will be visible with small telescopes starting from sunset. As for (7482) 1994 PC1, it is not the first pass close to our planet, calculations on its orbit actually indicate that a transit occurred on January 17, 1933 at a distance of only one million kilometers.
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