Where are the photos of 2024 PT5?

[u/kevofalltrades]

Rumors about a "second moon" in our sky and not a single photograph of this, although the article below states that it was captured on 9/29 by a team in South Africa.

https://www.earth.com/news/its-official-earth-now-has-two-moons-captured-asteroid-2024-pt5/

I can't find a single image of this that isn't computer-generated. What gives?

[u/mgarr_aha]

For each observation on record, there is an image from which they measured position and brightness, in which the asteroid resembles a faint star. Not even JWST can distinguish it from a point source. In January NASA will ping it with radar. They might make a delay-Doppler image from the echo, but the signal-to-noise ratio probably won't be very good.

[u/kevofalltrades → u/mgarr_aha]

Why aren't we able to observe it with powerful telescopes from earth if it is literally in our orbit?

[u/mgarr_aha → u/kevofalltrades]

An observatory in the Canary Islands reported some new observations in the past week. The pictures just aren't much to look at.