This video combines all of the observations of asteroid (1126) Otero made by ESA’s Hera spacecraft. The raw images have been processed and aligned. They were acquired on 11 May 2025, while Hera was 2.8 million km from the asteroid. The spacecraft tracked Otero for approximately three hours, capturing an image every six minutes.

The asteroid’s large size and good illumination meant that, even from this distance, it appeared bright enough for Hera’s Asteroid Framing Camera to detect. Hera’s destination, the asteroid Didymos, will appear at least six times fainter than this when it is first detected by the spacecraft in late 2026.

Otero was discovered in 1929 at Heidelberg Observatory in Germany. Almost a century later, it has been observed using a camera manufactured by German company Jenoptik onboard a spacecraft controlled from the city of Darmstadt, less than 60 km from Heidelberg.

Access the related broadcast quality footage.