Space

The GROWTH-India telescope at the Indian Astronomical Observatory in Ladakh captured images of a building-sized asteroid as it made its closest approach to Earth, according to the Times of India. The asteroid's rapid movement caused background stars to appear as streaks of light.

Astrophysicist Varun Bhalerao from the Space Technology and Astrophysics Research (STAR) lab at IIT Bombay shared the image on social media platform X. "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 background stars look like streaks," he noted.

The GROWTH-India telescope is India’s first fully robotic optical research telescope, located at 4,500 metres in Ladakh, one of the world’s highest astronomical observatories.