Asteroid (4179) Toutatis passes the Earth

Eso_eso0430b_1024

eso_eso0430b September 29th, 2004

Credit: ESO

The asteroid (4179) Toutatis, as photographed with the FORS1 multimode instrument at the 8.2-m VLT Kueyen telescope at the ESO Paranal Observatory. At the time of these exposures, the asteroid was about 1,640,000 km from the Earth and moving rapidly across the sky in the southern constellation Ara (The Altar). The exposure time was 5 min while the telescope was following the normal diurnal motion; the stars now appear as points of light, while the asteroid's long trail crosses the entire field-of-view. Both photos were obtained through a narrow optical filter.

Provider: European Southern Observatory

Image Source: https://www.eso.org/public/images/eso0430b/

Curator: European Southern Observatory, Garching bei München, Germany

Image Use Policy: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

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Image Details

Image Type
Observation
Object Name
4179 Toutatis
Subject - Solar System
Interplanetary Body > Asteroid

Color Mapping

  Telescope Spectral Band Wavelength
Grayscale VLT (FORS1) Optical -
Eso_eso0430b_1280
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ID
eso0430b
Subject Category
A.2.3  
Subject Name
4179 Toutatis
Credits
ESO
Release Date
2004-09-29T00:00:00
Lightyears
Redshift
Reference Url
https://www.eso.org/public/images/eso0430b/
Type
Observation
Image Quality
Distance Notes
Facility
Very Large Telescope
Instrument
FORS1
Color Assignment
Grayscale
Band
Optical
Bandpass
Central Wavelength
Start Time
Integration Time
300
Dataset ID
Notes
Coordinate Frame
Equinox
Reference Value
Reference Dimension
2048.0, 2042.0
Reference Pixel
Scale
Rotation
Coordinate System Projection:
Quality
FITS Header
Notes
Creator (Curator)
European Southern Observatory
URL
http://www.eso.org/
Name
Email
Telephone
Address
Karl-Schwarzschild-Strasse 2
City
Garching bei München
State/Province
Postal Code
D-85748
Country
Germany
Rights
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Publisher
European Southern Observatory
Publisher ID
eso
Resource ID
eso0430b
Metadata Date
2016-07-19T08:45:24+02:00
Metadata Version
1.1
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Detailed color mapping information coming soon...

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There is no distance meta data in this image.

 

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