Near Earth Asteroid 2024 YR4 observed with the VLT

This is a sequence of observations of the Near Earth Asteroid 2024 YR4 carried out with ESO’s Very Large Telescope in January 2025, shortly after it was discovered in December 2024. The asteroid is the faint source moving diagonally against the background of fixed stars. These are infrared images taken with the HAWK-I instrument through different filters; the brightness variations are due to the different sensitivity of the instrument in different filters as well as intrinsic variations of the asteroid itself.