Asteroid 2005 YU55 - Caught In The Act!

Written by Tammy Plotner

Were you clouded out last night for Asteroid 2005 YU55's closest approach? Then don't be disappointed... Just take a look at what we caught here in Ohio!



This awesome footage was captured by John Chumack. Says John...

"The little dash line in each image is the Near Earth Asteroid 2005 YU55 passing between the Moon and the Earth last night at a very close 201,700 miles. This was the closest one in 35 years.

This was captured with my homemade 16" scope & QHY8 CCD camera binned 2x2, These were 10 second exposures, from my observatories in Yellow Springs, Ohio Captured at 07:18 pm E.S.T. I had to ambush it, sit ahead of the track and wait until it enter the FOV as the Asteroid was running a few minutes ahead of JPL's published ephemeris schedule!

Thanks to my FAA friend Melchor from OKC who was here visiting my observatories, he helped a lot by repeatedly reading off jump coordinates quickly, so I could punch them into my telescope control software (The Sky) and ambush the Asteroid! The Asteroid was really moving fast and was out of my FOV in 1.5 minutes."

Amazing video... Thank you for sharing!