On Thursday, asteroid 2012TS4 passed only fifty thousand kilometers from Earth. This is the closest celestial body ever passing near our planet was captured by Japanese astrophysicists from the Tokyo University observatory. The video was posted online.
The camera of the Kiso observatory, located on the island of Honshu, filmed yesterday a celestial body with a diameter of 30 meters, which passes at the closest approach to the Earth. The asteroid did not threaten the safety of our planet, and, contrary to numerous predictions, did not fall on it.
According to scientists who have filmed rare video frames, this phenomenon is rarely caught in the camera lens. The next time TC4 will pass near our planet in two years. Scientists have calculated that this asteroid is an exact copy of the Chelyabinsk meteorite.
Japanese scientists have stepped up the observation system for small celestial bodies, as after the fall of the meteorite in Chelyabinsk. They believe that fragments of such an object, when falling on a metropolis, can cause significant damage to its inhabitants and infrastructure. It is in Japan that conferences on the problems of meteorological protection of our planet are regularly held.
Anton Alexandrov