Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Big and Bright Asteroid to Pass by Earth June 14

An unusually large and bright near-Earth asteroid was recently discovered and it will make its closest approach to Earth on June 14 at about 23:10 UTC. The object is so bright, the Slooh Observatory will attempt to have a live webcast showing the object sneaking past Earth at about 5.3 million km (3.35 million) miles away, or about 14 times the distance between Earth and the Moon. The asteroid, 2012 LZ1 was discovered by Rob McNaught and colleagues on 2012 June 10/11, and is about 502 meters (1,650 feet) wide.

The team of Nick Howes, Ernesto Guido and Giovanni Sostero from the Remanzacco Observatory took this image of 2012 LZ1 on June 13. They also have an animation of the object here.

There’s no danger this asteroid will impact Earth, but it has been classified as a Potentially Hazardous Asteroid. PHAs are asteroids larger than approximately 100 meters that can come closer to our planet than 0.05 AU (7.4 million km, 4.65 million miles). None of the known PHAs is on a collision course with our planet, although, as the Remanzacco team pointed out, astronomers are finding new ones all the time.

The Slooh Observatory will use a telescope on the Canary Islands and webcast the footage beginning at 00:00 UTC on Friday (8:00 p.m. EDT Thursday), and the link to the webcast is http://events.slooh.com/. Discoverer Rob McNaught will be joining the webcast for commentary. McNaught made the discovery using the Uppsala Schmidt telescope at Siding Spring Observatory in Australia.

2012 LZ1 is just a bit smaller than asteroid 2005 YU55 (502 meters), which made a very close flyby of Earth in November, 2011 at just 32,5087km (202,000 miles) away.

Want to try and see this asteroid for yourself? Check out the Minor Planet Center’s ephemeris of this object, and for reference, it will be passing near NGC 6822 (Barnard’s Galaxy) in the constellation Sagittarius at its time of closest approach.

Sources: Remanzacco Observatory, iTelescope.net

14 Replies to “Big and Bright Asteroid to Pass by Earth June 14”

    1. A little slow on the uptake, Ann??? Here, let me help you…take my hand…the contrails are water, condensed out when jets’ hot exhaust hits the cold upper atmosphere, and water is not a big concern. Also, you can check this yourself by analyzing a spectrograph of sunlight passing through a contrail, that is, if you WANT the truth instead of just being a fear mongerer.

  2. why don’t they tell us the truth about what’s really going on?? Not the little crappy things that they print. chemtrails for over 10yrs but never mention it to the public???

    1. Ann, do you realize that anybody, even you can measure the spectrum of light passing through the contrail and determine its chemical composition? You don’t need to rely on anybody to tell you the “truth”, you can find out yourself!

    2. @Ann Gates – you’re right, in that the ‘chem trails’ are mostly water vapour, which is indeed a chemical.

      1. yeah! A DANGEROUS chemical called dihydrogen monoxide, it’s only the most corrosive substance known to man! Give it enough time and it’ll change landscapes, tumble mountains, oxidize metals, or cook your pasta!

    3. The truth? Well conspiracy theorists are mental ill people. Or very stupid people. That is the truth.

      But since you are not mentally challenged or stupid, you can start with physics courses and learn maths. This way you can easily debunk those crazy people with simple questions like: How big of a mass would an air-plan require to create a trail for multiple kilometres? Are there any plane’s out there that can carry that amount of chemicals?
      I give you a clue, a complete dedicated 747 fully loaded with chemicals would only be able to create a 900 meter long chem-trail max. (I used steam density, the volume is about the wingspan and the height of the fuselage. )

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  6. I see my comment was removed. If you’re ready for the truth you can visit one of my YT channels “SisterRosetta” Why is it so hard to believe that we’re not getting the Truth from those sworn to protect us? Re chemTrails.

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