ING Photo Tour

Asteroid 2002 NY40 at 750,000 kilometres away, twice the distance to the Moon, and moving very rapidly across the sky. Despite the technical difficulties introduced by this, very high quality images were obtained in the near-infrared with a resolution of 0.11 arcseconds using NAOMI instrument. This resolution is close to the theoretical limit of the William Herschel Telescope, and sets an upper limit to the size of the asteroid: only 400 metres across at the time of the observations.