2012 DA 14 Fly By
Close fly by of Near- Earth asteroid 2012 DA14 - 2013 02 15.
Today this 45m asteroid discovered last year by Observatorio Astronómico de La Sagra, Granada in Spain, made a very close approach to Earth passing at only ~27 000km, less than 1/13 of Earth distance to the Moon.
It's period is 317.2days
Tried to capture it remotely with the 12inch SCT, KAF1603ME at pixel scale of 1.11 arcsec. 8s exposure
It was amazingly fast, crossing the 18.9arcmin of the image height in ~2.5min
9 image animation of Asteroid 2012 DA14 (images are cropped)
20130215 22h40 UT
I have to give some credit to Hugo Silva who sent me the correct coordinates to be spot on at the right place at the right time to catch such a fast moving object.
I've tried some ephemeris from Cartes du Ciel but they were way off, after 3 attempts of blank images decided to use the info Hugo sent me earlier, this time with success.
Astrometric Grid of 2012 DA14
Below you can see a diagram of the fly by passage very close to Earth.
The outer ring is our Moon's orbit.
Credit: NASA/JPL Near-Earth Object Program Office