By: Sarah Petersen
Armageddon is not today. But the largest asteroid since 1976 will shoot by Earth this afternoon.
The asteroid 2005 YU55, that is being compared to the size of a modern aircraft carrier, will pass in between Earth and the orbit of the moon this afternoon. While this flyby marks the closest any space rock of such size has come to Earth, NASA researchers announced there shouldn’t be any concern.
[/media-credit]“2005 YU55 cannot hit Earth, at least over the interval that we can compute the motion reliably, which extends for several hundred years,” research scientist Lance Benner, of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., said in a recent NASA video.
After discovering the rock six years ago, scientists have been studying the movements and possible interactions with Earth ever since. It is predicted to shoot across the sky at 4:28 p.m. MST. The rock will only be 200,000 miles from the Earth which seems quite close in comparison to the sun’s 94 million miles away from the Earth.
Also, it will be coming fast. The asteroid is expected to be traveling at about 29,000 mph when it flies by tonight so don’t blink or you may miss it.
Having known about this asteroid for the past six years, a direct route for the asteroid has been mapped out to exact specifics.
“We’re extremely confident, 100 percent confident, that this is not a threat,” said Don Yeomans, the manager of NASA’s Near Earth Object Program at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. “But it is an opportunity.”
But will we even be able to see it? Even though it is quite close it may be impossible to view with the naked eye. It has been suggested that with the right equipment an amateur astronomer might be able to catch a glimse of the asteroid as it shoots across the sky.
“The best time to observe it would be in the early evening on November 8th from the east coast of the US,” Scott Fisher, program director of the National Science Foundation’s Division of Astronomical Sciences told Space.com. “However! It is going to be VERY faint, even at its closest approach. You will need a decent sized telescope to be able to actually see the object as it flies by.”
According to Kelly Beatty at Sky & Telescope, you’ll need a telescope with at least a 6-inch aperture to see the asteroid.
Sky & Telescope, has a great map of the asteroid’s path, and reports that the space rock will take ten hours to move east across the sky.
If this is something you want to be certain not to miss, and don’t want to trust your old-school telescope, Italy’s Bellatrix Astronomical Observatory is offering a live webcast after a $12 donation.
But all in all, the asteroid will pass by extremely fast in the direction you can see below. Asteroid 2005 YU55 is making history, and will hopefully give NASA a full day of excitement.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
