Video Gallery: Near-Earth Asteroid 2001 YB5
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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.
Some of the videos in this collection
require the DivX-codec.

  Photographer, Location Video Comments

John Rogers, near Los Angeles, CA, USA
Jan. 5, 2002

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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
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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
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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]

More images (click on the name of the photographer to view the image):
V. Tuboly (Hungary, Dec. 14, 2001)

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