(1566) Icarus, 19 June 2015

[Rob_K]

The tiny dot in the middle is a lump of rock just over a km in mean diameter hurtling through space at a distance of 10.7 million km from Earth.

(1566) Icarus is an Apollo asteroid (m.p.) discovered in 1949 and one of the first identified NEOs. It was also the first asteroid to be observed with radar, in 1996. Icarus made a close pass to Earth of about 8 million km on 16 June 2015 and it was again observed with radar, results yet to be announced.

Canon 650D, 200mm lens, 7 x 20 sec, ISO 6400, F/5.6, crop. 08:42-47, 19 June 2015 UT.

Cheers -

[algwat]

Oh, and excellent effort rob. following some of your other post.
checked out its path over my zenith at mid evening in july august.
I'll try and have got if weather permits

My be a closer set of images, could see a small tail...??? 8)

regards,alan

[Rob_K]

Thanks Al! Don't leave it too long - it's dimming fairly rapidly. By the start of Aug it'll be almost mag 19, dimmer than mag 20 by the end (JPL ephemeris). Interesting about the current brightness, don't quite know what to make of it. And I don't understand why someone hasn't done deep CCD images rather than the standard astrometrical ones. :shrug: But it is moving fast!

Cheers -

[cometcatcher]

Nice one Rob!