Near-Earth asteroid 2023 EY will pass Earth on Thursday evening (March 16), and you can watch it live through a free telescope livestream.
Asteroid 2023 EY is about 52 feet (16 meters) across and is expected to pass within 149,000 miles (239,800 kilometers) of Earth’s surface on Thursday, only about 62% of the average lunar distance (opens in a new tab), according to astronomer Gianluca Masi of the Virtual Telescope Project. While this makes the encounter very close astronomically speaking, there is no chance that 2023 EY will impact our planet based on its current trajectory.
The close encounter with Earth means larger ground-based telescopes should have no problem resolving the asteroid as it zooms in close to the planet. If you would like to watch the flyby, the Virtual Telescope Project will be hosting a free live stream on Thursday starting at 8:00 p.m. EST (0000 GMT March 17) courtesy of the proIect website (opens in a new tab) Or Youtube channel (opens in a new tab).
Related: What are asteroids?
Asteroid 2023 EY was first discovered just days ago, on March 13, by the NASA-funded Asteroid Earth Impact Last Warning System (ATLAS) operated by the University of ‘Hawaii. ATLAS is the first to be able to scan the entire sky every 24 hours, allowing astronomers to better catalog and identify near-Earth objects such as asteroids.
The survey consists of four telescopes which are each capable of surveying an area of sky 100 times larger than the full moon, according to NASA (opens in a new tab). Two of the telescopes are in Hawaii, while the other two reside in South Africa and Chile respectively.
Combined, ATLAS has discovered more than 700 near-Earth asteroids so far, none of which have threatened the planet.
“We have not yet found significant threat of asteroid impact on earth, but we continue to search for this large population that we know has yet to be found. Our goal is to find any possible impact years to decades in advance so that it can be deflected with a capability using the technology we already have, like DART“, NASA’s Lindley Johnson, planetary defense officer at the agency’s headquarters, said in a press release (opens in a new tab).
Although 2023 BY was never predicted to hit Earth, another asteroid recently made waves when it was given a 1 in 600 chance of hitting our planet in 2046. This other space rock exhibits longer a risk and most certainly will. missing the planetannounced NASA.
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