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“Don't wake me for the end of the world unless it has very good special effects.” -Roger Zelazny It's always the ones you least expect that get you the worst, it seems. I went to bed last night excited that Asteroid 2012 DA14, a 200,000 ton asteroid, was going to pass within just 28,000 km (or 17,000 miles) of Earth's surface, which would make it the closest pass of an asteroid that large that we've ever observed.
The clip was captured by Gianluca Masi, an astrophysicist and manager of the Virtual Telescope Project, provided by the Bellatrix Astronomical Observatory in Italy.
The space rock, called 7482 (1994 PC1), poses no threat to the Earth as it will be five times farther away from the planet than the moon, as it shoots by at 43,000 mph at 21:51 GMT tonight.
The space rock, called 7482 (1994 PC1), poses no threat to the Earth as it will be five times further away from the planet than the Moon, as it shoots by at 43,000 mph.
An asteroid bigger than the Statue of Liberty will fly past Earth at 8:20pm GMT on Christmas Day, according to data from NASA's Center for Near Earth Studies. The asteroid, called 2014 SD224, will come within 0.02019 astronomical units, or nearly 1.9 million miles, from the Earth's surface. 2014 SD224 has a diameter anywhere between 302 and 690 feet (92 to 210 metres) – meaning it could be more than twice the size of the Statue of Liberty (305 feet) or bigger than Salisbury Cathedral (404 feet). As 2014 SD224 flies past Earth, it will be travelling at a speed of 10 kilometres per se...