On Saturday evening, the Abu Dhabi Desert sky was graced with an extraordinary astronomical event. A potentially hazardous asteroid, traveling between Earth and the Moon, created a stunning display as it passed relatively close to our planet.
According to a Gulf News report, this unusual occurrence, happening at a distance of around 295,000 kilometers, marked the brightest asteroid passage in the last 12 years.
The Seal Observatory, located in the Abu Dhabi desert, documented the event. They produced a 12-second accelerated video by combining 129 images taken every 1.5 seconds. The video shows the asteroid as a fleeting dot moving across the star-filled sky, a mesmerizing view for both amateur stargazers and seasoned astronomers.
In addition to the video, the observatory performed detailed photometric observations to study the asteroid’s brightness over time.
Initial findings indicate that the asteroid rotates on its axis every 40.3 minutes, as seen from its periodic changes in brightness. This fast rotation suggests the asteroid has an irregular shape, differing from the typical spherical or ‘potato-bean’ shapes often seen in smaller asteroids.
