On the night of August 31, I imaged the asteroid Florence which made a relatively close pass of Earth. At a distance of 4.4 million miles, it is one of the larger near Earth asteroids. With a size of 2.7 miles, any collision would not be good news, but luckily no collisions are forecast for the foreseeable future. It won't come this close again until after the year 2500.

Stacked and merged image showing its path across the sky

 

Animated Gif imaging showing its motion over an hour worth of exposures.



Radar observations indicate it has two small moons in orbit around it.

 


Image via NASA/JPL Center for Near-Earth Object Studies.