NEWS: Asteroid about to take a little dip on earth's gravity well

[Vast fury]

A relatively large asteroid, just discovered on August 28th, will fly past the Earth-Moon system on Sept 14th only 2.8 million km (7.4 lunar distances) away. 2012 QG42 is about as wide as three football fields and comes to us from just beyond the orbit of Mars. Astronomers who are now monitoring the space rock say it shines about as brightly as a 15th magnitude star.



source:http://spaceweather.com Wednesday, Sep. 5, 2012

 

[garyw]

This is not uncommon. There are many Earth passing asteroids with new ones being found daily.

This is a good twitter account to follow for this sort of thing:

https://twitter.com/lowflyingrocks

012 QC18, ~42m-94m in diameter, just passed the Earth at 6km/s, missing by ~ten million, two hundred thousand km.

2012 PX, ~61m-140m in diameter, just passed the Earth at 10km/s, missing by ~six million, seven hundred and thirty thousand km.

 

[Vast fury]

Well yes, as of the moment there are 1329 potentially hazardous asteroids, but my point is, this one is big. about 300 meters. Something that big coming that close is uncommon. But anyway, thanks for commenting! I appreciate it!:tiphat:

 

[ED_4]

I'd hate to see what would happen if this were to get into Earth. The rock that created Meteor Crater in Arizona was guessed to be about 50 meters in diameter. Imagine what size the crater of this one would be like if it were to impact?:blink: