Featured Image Credit: Science Photo Library - ANDRZEJ WOJCICKI/Getty Images
NASA astronomers have released rare images of a huge asteroid that threatens to hit Earth in seven years time.
Fears have been growing around YR4 2024, which is the name of the asteroid that is due to collide with our planet in 2032.
Having become known as the ‘city killer’, the asteroid could hit Earth with a force that is 500 times more powerful than the bomb detonated in Hiroshima, according to former NASA astronaut Chris Hadfield.
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Talking to LBC, Hadfield said: “Most asteroids are discovered by amateurs, people with their own telescopes who just love looking into the darkness and trying to find a star that’s where the star shouldn’t be or one that’s moving against the starfield, but this one is very faint, it has never been seen before this Christmas.”
Now, NASA has released images of the space rock that threatens to cause serious damage.
Speaking to Space.com, Bryce Bolin, who is a NASA astronomer involved in the photo-op, said that ‘only a few asteroids have been studied like this’.
The photos were captured by the Gemini South Telescope on February 7, which is located on a mountain in the Chilean Andes.
At the time that the images were taken, the asteroid is said to have been a whopping 37 million miles away from Earth.
In order to take the images from so far away, the team reportedly ‘took 12 200-second long exposures in the Red band (which is a specific range of wavelengths that correspond to visible red light or slightly beyond into the near-infrared spectrum) and tracked the motion of the asteroid’.
Bolin went on to reveal that the observations were difficult to capture because the asteroid was very faint.
Another issue was the fact that the moon was 70% illuminated, which gave off backlighting.
The astronomer also said that YR4 is set ‘to be extremely exciting’ due to ‘the scientific potential of studying such a small asteroid in high detail’.
This sighting could be the last ‘chance we have to observe the asteroid from Gemini’ before it reapproaches back towards Earth in 2028.
NASA will also be using the James Webb telescope to learn more about the asteroid’s orbit path as it makes its way back to Earth in 2032.
The team will use their analysis to determine the level of damage that would be caused if the space rock does collide with our planet.
