Summary: Near-Earth asteroid 2001 YB5 raced past Earth on January 7, 2002, only two times farther away than the Moon. Just before the close encounter, the 300 meter-wide space rock brightened to 12th magnitude -- an easy target for backyard telescopes. [3D orbit] [ephemeris]

Unless otherwise noted, all images below are copyrighted by the photographers.
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	Photographer, Location	Video	Comments
	John Rogers, near Los Angeles, CA, USA Jan. 5, 2002	mpeg format: #1 (3.0 MB), #2 (1.3 MB) ASF format: #3 (0.8 MB)	This movie captured at the Camarillo Observatory shows 2001 YB5 streaking among the stars approximately 2 days before its closest approach to Earth. The space rock was 0.034 AU from our planet and moving across the sky at a rate of 4.6 degrees/day.
	John Rogers, near Los Angeles, CA, USA Jan. 4, 2002	gif format: #1	J. Rogers used a 0.30 meter Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope at the Camarillo Observatory to record this sequence of images of 2001 YB5. The space rock was 0.052 AU from Earth and moving across the sky at a rate of 2.0 degrees/day.
	Thomas Payer, Essen, Germany Jan. 3, 2002	gif format: #1	On January 3rd, days before the space rock's closest approach to Earth, T. Payer captured 5 images of 2001 YB5 spanning an 8-minute interval. He used a 12.5'' f/5.7 Newtonian reflector and a Starlight SXL8 CCD camera at the Walter-Hohmann Observatory. The visual magnitude of the asteroid was 15.8. [more]