2004 DF2 (small Apollo rapidly receding from Earth)
![](images/2004DF2_20040220_PBirtwhistle.JPG)
At 1am UT on 17th Feb 2004 this Apollo had come to within 2.8 lunar
distances (LD) of Earth, but at that time was in the far southern sky at
declination -56°. LINEAR discovered it just over two days later when it
had reached declination -7° and was already 9 LD away at magnitude +19
and fading fast.
Modra Observatory (118) confirmed the object 16 hours after discovery and
it was imaged at Great Shefford an hour after that when it was at a distance of
13 LD (image A). A few hours later it was caught by the Tenagra II
observatory which allowed the discovery announcement to be made in
MPEC 2004-D17.
Just 23 hours after first imaging it at Great Shefford, image B
was obtained by which time it had receded to 18 LD
and had faded over a magnitude.
This small NEO was last recorded with the 1.52-m telescope at Calar
Alto in Spain, just over 24 hours after image B was taken and only three
days after discovery.
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