Potentialy-Hazardous Asteroid 2004 BL86

NEA 2004 BL86 Fly By

2015-01-26, Near Asteroid fly by.
This is a relatively large asteroid passing at 3.1 LD (lunar distance) from Earth.
Discovered by LINEAR survey in 30 january 2004, got number (357439) and designation 2004 BL86.
Estimated size was ~680m and period 1.84yr

I joined an observation group to study the asteroid during this close approach.
Made some observations using my remote observatory. SCT12", SBIG ST-10E V filter. Exposure was 4sec because of the asteroid motion.
The object crossed the image FOV (30"x20") very quickly at 2.5arcsec/sec

 

Animation of 2004 BL86 composed of 7 images (7x4s)

 

Radar images from JPL's Goldstone Tracking Station shows a binary asteroid, also refines its size to a smaller 325m.

 

Goldstone image credit

 

 

Image stack of 7x4s showing path of 2004 BL86

 

 

 

 

After some long months of calibrating and refining data, an intensive efort made by Bruce Gary, Dr Vishnu Reddy finnaly submited the paper:

The Physical Characterization of the Potentially-Hazardous Asteroid 2004 BL86: A Fragment of a Differentiated Asteroid

http://arxiv.org/pdf/1509.07122v1