Giant asteroid bigger than Burj Khalifa whizzes safely past UAE

A near-Earth asteroid bigger than Burj Khalifa whizzed safely past the Earth on Wednesday early morning (UAE time), but space enthusiasts in the UAE, waiting to watch this celestial event, were left disappointed due to the dense cloud cover.

The asteroid flew past the Earth at a distance of 1.9 million kilometres, which is about five times the distance between the Earth and Moon.

The asteroid has been classified as a Potentially Hazardous Asteroid (PHA) due to its large size and flyby closeness to Earth.

It’s said no asteroid will come as close to Earth as this one for the next 200 years.

Waiting to capture the rare phenomenon, a Sharjah-based Astro photographer, Prabhakaran, said, “I have been capturing celestial objects, eclipses and rare events like meteor showers and these asteroid passes. But on Tuesday night/Wednesday early morning the sky was cloudy all over the UAE. I was waiting to capture it, but unfortunately it was too cloudy so I couldn’t capture any photos or videos.”

He adds, “I was definitely a bit disappointed but have captured asteroids in the past. For instance, in 2020 there was another asteroid that came very close to Earth. That came about 6.3 million km closer to Earth. I even took a video of it that time.”

Sharing tips and techniques, Prabhakaran explains how he captures these celestial events.

“You just need a normal camera, even a VSLR camera with a long tele photo lens can help capture it. All one needs to do is just take short exposures of 10-15 seconds and take several images and play it like a time lapse. When you play it like a time lapse, the background stars will be fixed and, in the foreground, one would see a moving object,” he avers.

He adds, “Students of Aerospace Engineering at our University have also received recognition from the International Astronomical Union (IAU) for their asteroid discovery. The IAU is responsible for assigning designations and official names to space bodies.”