Time Lapse of Asteroid 2014 JO25

April 20th, 2017 by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.

Despite some clouds, I was able to capture time lapse video of Asteroid 2014 JO25 passing by last night. Nearly 2 hours of time exposure photos are compressed into 23 seconds, from 9:20 p.m. until 11:09 p.m. CDT (watch full-screen, and make sure the highest definition is enabled, 1080p):

The asteroid is traveling from near the left side toward the right. The clearest view, unobstructed by clouds, is near the end of the video.

The dumbbell-shaped asteroid was measured a few days ago by radar to be about 1 mile long, and was about 1 .5 million miles away from Earth at the time of the video.

Taken with a Canon 6D, Canon 200 mm f/2.8 lens at f/4.0, ISO2500, over 500 individual 10 sec exposures taken every 12 seconds, mounted on an Astrotrac star tracker, which in turn is on a Manfrotto geared head on a tripod.


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