An asteroid the size of a city block is set to fly by Earth Thursday (June 14), and you may be able to watch it happen live.
The near-Earth asteroid
2012 LZ1, which astronomers think is about 1,650 feet (500 meters)
wide, will come within 14 lunar distances of Earth Thursday evening.
While there's no danger of an impact on this pass, the huge space rock
may come close enough to be caught on camera.
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That's what the team running the Slooh Space Camera thinks, anyway. The
online skywatching service will train a telescope on the Canary Islands
on 2012 LZ1 and stream the footage live, beginning at 8:00 p.m. EDT
Thursday (0000 GMT Friday).
You can watch the asteroid flyby on Slooh's website, found here: http://events.slooh.com/
2012 LZ1 just popped onto astronomers' radar this week. It was
discovered on the night of June 10-11 by Rob McNaught and his
colleagues, who were peering through the Uppsala Schmidt telescope at
Siding Spring Observatory in Australia.
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Researchers estimate that the space rock is between 1,000 and 2,300
feet wide (300-700 m). On Thursday evening, it will come within about
3.35 million miles (5.4 million kilometers) of our planet, or roughly 14
times the distance between Earth and the moon.
Because of its size and proximity to Earth, 2012 LZ1 qualifies as a
potentially hazardous asteroid. Near-Earth asteroids generally have to
be at least 500 feet (150 m) wide and come within 4.65 million miles
(7.5 million km) of our planet to be classified as potentially
hazardous.
[Related: NASA launches mock asteroid mission - at sea]
2012 LZ1 is roughly the same size as asteroid 2005 YU55,
which made a much-anticipated flyby of Earth last November. But 2005
YU55 gave our planet a much closer shave, coming within 202,000 miles
(325,000 km) of us on the evening of Nov. 8. A space rock as big as 2005
YU55 hadn't come so close to Earth since 1976, researchers said.
Astronomers have identified nearly 9,000 near-Earth asteroids, but they
think many more are out there, waiting to be discovered.
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