Massive Asteroid To Pass Earth Next Week And You Can Watch It Via Webcam

A massive asteroid (2000 EM26) will be passing earth on the 17th of February, and while it’s still 0.018 AU away from the earth it is classed as a ‘potentially hazardous’ object. No need to be worried though, 1 Astronomical Unit (AU) is the distance between the Earth and the Sun, so 0.018 may sound close, but it’s really more than 2.6 million kilometres, meaning this asteroid is ‘close’ in astronomical terms, but flipping miles away in human terms.

It may not be in with a chance of hitting us, but it is close enough to get a good look at it and thanks to some cameras on Slooh.com (or its iPad app) you can view it online. Their cameras are trained on the right part of the skies above the Canary Islands so that you can login and take a peak.

“We continue to discover these potentially hazardous asteroids—sometimes only days before they make their close approaches to Earth. Slooh’s asteroid research campaign is gathering momentum with Slooh members using the Slooh robotic telescopes to monitor this huge population of potentially hazardous space rocks. We need to find them before they find us!” Said Slooh’s technical and research director, Paul Cox while speaking with Phys.org

Slooh are known to routinely track dangerous asteroids that have the potential to damage Earth and I’m pretty grateful this latest one is going to sail past us, given that it’s roughly the size of three football pitches. It was only a year ago that the Chelyabinsk incident saw a 30 metres in diameter asteroid explode in the sky, injuring more than 1000 people in the process.

Check out the live stream YouTube video below, there is a handy countdown timer on it to let you prepare for the viewing.

Thank you Huffington for providing us with this information.