Mountain-sized asteroid to fly by Earth Monday

A big asteroid will fly by Earth on Monday, but NASA says don’t worry — we’ll be safe.

The

asteroid is called 2004 BL86. It’ll come about 745,000 miles (1.2

million kilometers) from Earth, or about three times as far away as the

moon at 11:19 a.m. ET, according to NASA.

You’re wondering,

doesn’t this happen all the time? Yes and no. There are lots of

asteroids that pose a threat to Earth — about 550 as of January 22. None

are predicted to hit anytime soon.
But asteroid 2004 BL86 (yes,

we also wish it had a catchier name) is big — about a third of a mile (a

half-kilometer) in size. It will be the closest known asteroid this

large to pass near Earth until 2027, that’s when an asteroid called 1999

AN10 flies by us.

“While it poses no threat to Earth for the

foreseeable future, it’s a relatively close approach by a relatively

large asteroid, so it provides us a unique opportunity to observe and

learn more,” Don Yeomans, the recently retired manager of NASA’s Near

Earth Object Program Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in

Pasadena, California, said in a NASA press release.

This asteroid

is also interesting because you might be able to see it with strong

binoculars or backyard telescopes. That’s a rare opportunity for most of

us.

If you don’t have binoculars or a scope, you can watch from the comfort of your computer on The Virtual Telescope Project 2.0.
The

asteroid was discovered on January 30, 2004, by a telescope of the

Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) survey in White Sands, New

Mexico.

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Mountain-sized asteroid to fly by Earth Monday