An asteroid will come within cosmic kissing distance of Earth today. The 33ft-long space rock - called 2011 MD - is expected to hurtle within 7,600miles of our planet at 6pm GMT, about three-and-a-half hours later than had been anticipated. It will be bright enough for medium-sized telescopes to be able to see it. Read more
The 2011 MD asteroid, which is about the size of two buses, will pass over Australia about 11:00pm. Experts say there is no chance of impact and Fred Watson from the Australian Astronomical Observatory says there won't be much of a spectacle. He says the object is "tiny", and will only be visible from large telescopes in South Africa. Read more
The space rock will reach within 11,000 miles of the its surface and give off a light bright enough to be seen through a small telescope, experts said today. It was only spotted on Wednesday by a robotic telescope in New Mexico that scans the skies for such hazards. An alert was then put out yesterday by the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center in Massachusetts. Read more
Ed ~ Just a note, for those not used to google earth, to say that you can switch to 'sky' mode (in the menu bar), to see the asteroids position in the sky, and to 'earth' mode to see the locations on earth based on its visibility. The time intervals are every 6 hours, and every hour, because the object will travel very fast at closest approach around the 27th June.
The asteroid 2011 MD, about 10 meters in diameter, will fly by the earth on Jun 27. I'm showing with these animations the geometry of this encounter. It is interesting to note that it will come closer than the GPS satellites, and also that it comes from the norther hemisphere, passes over the Earth's south pole, and then is deflected so strongly that leaves the Earth back in the northern hemisphere. Read more