2023 DZ2

2023 DZ₂ is an asteroid roughly 70 meters in diameter, classified as a near-Earth object of the Apollo group, and originally a Virtual Impactor (VI). It was first observed on 27 February 2023, when it was 0.11 AU (16 million km) from Earth, with the Isaac Newton Telescope by Ovidiu Vaduvescu, Freya Barwell, and Kiran Jhass (ING and University of Sheffield student support astronomers) within the EURONEAR project. It passed 174,644 ± 0.9 km (108,518.75 ± 0.56 mi) of Earth on March 25, 2023. This is a little less than half the distance to the Moon. This was the largest asteroid to approach this close since 2019 OK. On March 21, 2023 with a 66-day observation arc, it was removed from the Sentry Risk Table. Due to the highly precise radar observations on 25 March 2023 we know that the 2004 Earth approach was closer than the 2023 approach.

The 2023 approach was visible to amateur astronomers with modest telescopes and telescopes equipped with an image sensor. From 20–24 March 2023 it was visible in the constellation of Cancer. At about 17:20 UT on the 25th the asteroid brightened to about apparent magnitude 10.1 while over Southeast Asia, and might have been visible to advanced observers using 10×50 binoculars. But for many locations the asteroid did not get brighter than magnitude 12 before setting and was out of the reach of binoculars.