Observing with BOS one of our astronomy team, BJ Fulton, has compiled a video of the asteroid 2005 YU55 as when it was recently near the Earth on its travel around the Solar System. The video is not in real time and represents many hours of observations, compiled into less than 30 seconds.
Tim Lister adds "The flyby of 2005 YU55 is the closest approach of an object this size (~400m; larger than an aircraft carrier) to the Earth since 1976. Although there is no chance this object will hit the Earth now or in the next hundred years, the close pass enables us to obtain a wealth of data on a Near Earth Object (NEO) that we couldn't normally get. At the point of closest approach on 2011 November 8 at 23:28 UTC (3:28pm PST), 2005 YU55 was 85% of the Earth-Moon distance or about 200,000 miles. New NEOs are being found all the time, particularly by the Pan STARRS Consortium, of which LCOGT is a member. New discoverys from PanSTARRS are regularly observed and confirmed by LCOGT's telescopes, including Sedgwick."
