An Asteroid's Parting Shot

As you may have heard, the asteroid 2012 DA14 silently glided past Earth on Friday, Feb. 15, 2013. Observations using radar have shown it to be an elongated rock about 20 x 40 meters (65 x 130 feet) in size. Normally such a small rock would evince little interest, but this one came close, missing the Earth by about 27,000 kilometers (17,000 miles).

It still didn't get very bright; it was invisible to the naked eye. But with digital cameras and dark skies, snapping pictures of it was a matter of knowing where to aim, something photographer Colin Legg knows very well. From Perth, Australia, he captured this lovely time-lapse video of the asteroid moving past Earth right at the time of closest approach, 19:24 UTC. And he captured more than just DA14; there are some other surprises in the video, too.

You can see DA14 sliding through the video from top to bottom on the left side of the frame.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/02/19/near_earth_asteroid_2012_da14_seen_in_time_lapse_video.html