Despite its large size, the size of three football fields, asteroid 2000 EM26 cannot be seen from the usual backyard telescope as it zooms past the earth tonight beginning at 5pm Alaska Time.
But, skywatchers can go to the Slooh website as well as Space.com to watch live coverage of the 885-foot in diameter asteroid that will whiz by the earth doing 27,000 miles per hour as it skirts our planet at approximately eight lunar distances.
This most recent fly-by comes only one year and two days since the close fly-by of the 98-foot earth-grazing asteroid NEA 2012 DA14 that passed by the planet at a mere 17,200 miles, coming closer to the earth than most of our satellites. That drive-by was followed by an asteroid that entered the atmosphere over Chelyabinsk,Russia, blasting apart near the city, damaging thousands of buildings and shattering windows throughout the city and injuring over a thousand people with flying glass from the explosion. The blast of the asteroid 18 miles above the Russian city released energy equivilent to 460 kilotons of TNT or about 20 atomic bombs.
The object, that was later determined to be another asteroid, this one 65-feet in diameter.
Slooh officials said, “On a practical level, a previously-unknown, undiscovered asteroid seems to hit our planet and cause damage or injury once a century or so, as we witnessed on June 20, 1908 and February 15, 2013,” Slooh astronomer Bob Berman said in a statement. “Every few centuries, an even more massive asteroid strikes us — fortunately usually impacting in an ocean or wasteland such an Antarctica. But the ongoing threat, and the fact that biosphere-altering events remain a real if small annual possibility, suggests that discovering and tracking all NEOs, as well as setting up contingency plans for deflecting them on short notice should the need arise, would be a wise use of resources.”
The live webcast from the skywatching website Slooh can be seen here or by going directly to their site.