An asteroid will fly past Earth today and you can see it live
And we just tracked him down
A relatively small asteroid the size of a bus will fly past Earth (on a cosmic scale) this morning, just 89,000 kilometers away, or 23% of the Earth-Moon distance. And while in this particular case no region of the planet is in any danger, the worrying thing is that we only detected it two days ago.
Astronomers spotted asteroid 2022 NF thanks to data from the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS), a system of cameras and telescopes in Hawaii whose primary function is to detect objects in close Earth orbit. The detection was made on July 4 and the calculations of its trajectory took some time, while we are talking about a space rock with a maximum length of 12.5 meters.
Its size is not enough to be categorized as a “potentially hazardous asteroid” on NASA’s list, since an object needs to be over 140 meters to be on that list.
The asteroid has already been visible since yesterday in some telescopes, while it will make its closest pass from Earth today, July 7, at 11 am. In fact, the Virtual Telescope Project offers a livestream from the Rome telescope, which you can watch from this link .
