Huge asteroid flies by Earth today: how to watch online

AP Photo

(SPACE.com) An asteroid the size of a city block is set to fly by Earth today (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.

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) -- the time of closest approach.

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.

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.

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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[Sam-Harris]

Seems like every month we get a new one whizzing by. Maybe not every month but quite a bit lately.

There has to be many near misses we didn't even see. It appears there is a lot of stuff floating around this solar system. I do believe Earth will get hit in the next 40 years. Hopefully, I am gone by then.

[mysticpizza]

I wish it would hit us and destroy everything, men will always hate, have war and make this earth a hellhole.

[baileycccc]

Where do these guys get their Math training??????????

[norcalruss]

You wonder who writes these stories. Since when has a "city block" been about 1650 feet? A quater mile is much longer than a city block and is only 1320 feet.

[ugleyme]

How long is a "quater mile?"

[josephp5]

I caught that too. More like 4 city blocks. But I guess that didn't sound as flowing to the editor.

[spitbucketbaptismo]

Ha ha, missed us by a long mile.

[gitmetawidit]

So it's 14 times further away than the moon and the moon is much, much, much larger. Why is this news?

[lloydbest1]

It's not. Now.

But 2.8 million miles is plenty close enough to the earth for the unromantically named 2012 LZ1 to be influenced by its gravity. Influenced in ways we can't yet tell.

It's possible we may get a revisit from this critter in a few years or decades and the next encounter could be a lot more dramatic.....

[lesserof2evil]

You need to get your HS diploma to understand its significance.