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A new asteroid close to Earth will hum the Earth closer to the moon on Sunday, September 9, and you can watch its approach during a live broadcast on the Internet tonight (September 8). According to NASA, flying over a car-shaped plane is getting closer to Earth.
The Sunday asteroid, named 2018 RC, is about the size of a jumbo jet, according to NASA's Asteroid Watch team. It was discovered on September 3 by the ATLAS (Asteroid Terrestrial Impact) warning system in Hawaii and will pass less than 220,000 kilometers from the Earth when it will approach Earth on Sunday. This is well within the average distance between the Earth and the Moon. The moon is on average about 382 900 km from the Earth. [Gallery: Potentially Dangerous Asteroids]
The Virtual Telescope Project, an online observatory founded by astrophysicist Gianluca Masi of the Bellatrix Astronomical Observatory in Ceccano, Italy, will host a live broadcast tonight from 18:00. EDT (22:00 GMT), and you can watch it live on Space.com, courtesy of the Virtual Telescope project, or directly on virtualtelescope.eu/webtv.
The 2018 asteroid RC has a diameter of between 100 and 230 feet (32 to 71 meters) – an estimate of NASA has fixed the width of the rock at 130 feet (40 m) – and will appear as a grain of light 12th size visible with small telescopes (larger than 4 inches or 10 cm). During tonight 's webcast, Masi will use a robotic telescope to easily monitor the asteroid as it passes through a backdrop of stars.
The asteroid encounter of Sunday 2018 will follow an even closer flyby of the newly discovered 2018 RW asteroid, which was only spotted on Friday, September 7 by astronomers, according to NASA. But this asteroid is much smaller, only 10 feet (3 m) in diameter. It 's about the size of a car, according to NASA' s Asteroid Watch team.
This small white fly in the center of this image is the asteroid 2018 RC, which will pass near Earth at a distance of about 136 000 miles (220 000 kilometers) on September 9, 2018.
Credit: Gianluca Masi / Virtual Telescope Project
Email Hanneke Weitering at [email protected] or follow her @hannekescience. follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.
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