ASTEROID TO NARROWLY MISS EARTH TONIGHT

 

An asteroid the size of a small truck will have a close encounter with Earth when it passes a few thousand kilometres above the planet's surface.

The asteroid, named 2023 BU, will whizz past Earth shortly after midnight on Friday January 27, and will be 3,500km above Earth's surface at its closest point - which is less than 3% of the average distance between our planet and the moon.

The relative near miss will be the fourth closest asteroid to pass Earth since records began.

Experts estimate it to be 3.5 to 8.5 metres in size, and say it poses no risk as it will turn into a fireball and largely disintegrate in the atmosphere.

NASA/JPL-Caltech

Amateur astronomer Gennadiy Borisov, who also spotted the interstellar comet 2I/Borisov, made the discovery from his Margo observatory in Nauchnyi, Crimea, on January 21.

Nasa’s Scout impact hazard assessment system has analysed the data and predicted the near miss.

A navigation engineer at Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) – Caltech, Davide Farnocchia said: "This is one of the closest approaches by a known near-Earth object ever recorded."

While any asteroid in Earth’s proximity will experience a change in trajectory due to the planet’s gravity, 2023 BU will come so close that its path around the Sun is expected to be significantly altered.

One of the asteroids which came closest to the Earth in the past was 2022 EB5, a small two-metre Apollo near-Earth asteroid that disintegrated in the atmosphere on March 11 2022, over the Arctic Ocean.

How to watch the asteroid

The asteroid is expected to be closest to the Earth at 12:27am on Friday, January 27 and that's when Nasa has said people will be able to watch it.

However, if you are not able to watch the asteroid due to weather conditions in the UK, The Virtual Telescope Project will be broadcasting the closest ever asteroid encounter with the Earth from 12:15 am on Friday.

NASA/JPL-Caltech

The Near-Earth Asteroid 2023 BU extremely close encounter: online observation event will be hosted by Astronomer Gianluca Masi on the project's website and YouTube channel.

The Virtual Telescope Project is a service provided by the Bellatrix Astronomical Observatory in Italy and managed by Dr Gianluca Masi. They also offer public online observing sessions, with a live commentary from their scientific staff, that are accessible online to viewers all over the world.