Scientists have revealed images of the “city-destroying” asteroid and identified possible locations it could strike.
NASA discovered the asteroid, named 2024 YR4, in December of last year. The space rock was first detected by an automated telescope in Chile and has since been placed at the top of the impact risk list by both US and European space agencies.
Experts predict that 2024 YR4 could potentially collide with Earth on December 22, 2032.
Reports suggest that the asteroid could be as large as the Statue of Liberty or Cinderella’s Castle at Walt Disney World Florida. Dr. Robin George Andrews, a scientist, has raised concerns that attempts to deflect the asteroid using rockets could lead to disastrous consequences, even possibly triggering an end-of-the-world scenario.
Despite the asteroid’s potential risk, it has only a one-in-48 chance of actually impacting Earth.
In the meantime, scientists continue to study the asteroid, and recently, they released images of what it looks like. The snapshot was taken on February 7 of this year using the 8.1-meter Gemini South telescope, located on Cerro Pachón mountain in the Chilean Andes. At the time, the asteroid was about 37 million miles from Earth and 130 million miles from the sun, as reported by Space.com.
Bryce Bolin, an astronomer at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center who assisted in capturing the photograph, expressed his excitement about the study of 2024 YR4, saying, “Not only because of its notoriety but for the scientific potential of studying such a small asteroid in high detail.” He added that only a few asteroids have been observed in such detail.
To obtain the image, he explained that they took 12 exposures, each lasting 200 seconds in the Red band, and tracked the asteroid’s movement during the process.
“The observations were challenging for three main reasons,” said Bryce Bolin. “First, the asteroid was faint, so large telescopes were needed to capture it.”
This difficulty was compounded by the fact that 2024 YR4 was visible when the moon was 70 percent illuminated, adding extra background light to the sky, which made detecting the asteroid more challenging.
Second, the asteroid was moving at a rate of 0.26 arcseconds per minute, requiring Bolin and his team to carefully track its movement with the Gemini South telescope.
This isn’t the first time the asteroid has been photographed. NASA previously released an image of 2024 YR4 on December 27 last year.
The International Asteroid Warning Network is also actively monitoring the asteroid’s path to assess its potential risk. The asteroid will remain visible throughout April, but after that, it will become “too faint to observe” until June 2028.
