It was passed by a heart-stopping speed of 28.946 kilometers per hour as it is considered as close as ten times the moon distance (Image: X @Varun Bhalerao)

On July 25 Thursday, GROWTH-India which is the first fully robotic telescope captured some images of a giant Asteroid when it took a close travel by Earth. It was passed by a heart-stopping speed of 28.946 kilometres per hour as it is considered as close as ten times the moon’s distance. India’s first fully robotic snapped the image which was located at the Indian Astronomical Observatory situated in Hanle, Ladakh. The picture was shared by Astrophysicist Varun Bhalerao on the X platform as stars were found like flakes on account of its rapid movement.

Last night, the GROWTH-India Telescope caught this 116m, building-sized Asteroid on its closest approach to earth! We tracked the rapid motion of the asteroid as it zipped across the sky at just 10x lunar distance. The rapid motion makes the background stars look like streaks. pic.twitter.com/gbbT8yxqsP

— Varun Bhalerao (@starlabiitb) July 26, 2024

The core notion of the GROWTH-India telescope is to closely observe different phenomena in the celestials, especially Asteroids which might be a potential threat to the Earth‘s surface. The residues of Asteroids in the solar systems contribute to further scientific findings and valuable insights revealing a set of circumstances that existed gazillion days ago.

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The GROWTH-India telescope was introduced in the year 2018 and is considered a 0.7-meter wide-filed optical telescope. It is India’s first fully robotic research telescope set up as a part of the international GROWTH program. This telescope has been widely used for time-domain astronomy as it was jointly made and operated by IIT Bombay and the Indian Institute of Astrophysics. The Indian Astronomical Observatory (IAO) is a high-altitude astronomy station which is situated in Hanle, Ladakh at an elevation of 4,500 meters. This is one of the world’s highest sites located in India for gamma-ray, optical and infrared telescopes.

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