Asteroid (4179) Toutatis passes the Earth

The asteroid (4179) Toutatis, as photographed with the FORS1 multimode instrument at the 8.2-m VLT Kueyen telescope at the ESO Paranal Observatory. At the time of these exposures, the asteroid was about 1,640,000 km from the Earth and moving rapidly across the sky in the southern constellation Ara (The Altar).

The exposure time was 5 min while the telescope was following the normal diurnal motion; the stars now appear as points of light, while the asteroid's long trail crosses the entire field-of-view. Both photos were obtained through a narrow optical filter.

Herkunftsnachweis:

ESO

Über das Bild

ID:eso0430b
Typ:Beobachtung
Veröffentlichungsdatum:29. September 2004
Dazugehörige Veröffentlichungen:eso0430
Größe:2048 x 2042 px

Über das Objekt

Name:4179 Toutatis
Typ:Solar System : Interplanetary Body : Asteroid
Kategorie:Solar System

Bildformate

Großes JPEG
979,3 KB

Bildschirm-Hintergrundbilder

1024x768
131,1 KB
1280x1024
227,8 KB
1600x1200
374,4 KB
1920x1200
518,6 KB
2048x1536
796,1 KB

Farben & Filter

SpektralbereichTeleskop
OptischVery Large Telescope
FORS1

Exposure time: 300s