11/08/11 Asteroid Fly-By Today

Today, at approximately 5:29pm CT, asteroid 2005YU55 will pass by Earth, but pose no danger of smashing into our planet. The asteroid (pictured below), which is the size of about four football fields across, will come inside the orbit of the moon today, scientists say.

This flyby will be the closest anything of this large size has come close to Earth since 1976. Fortunately, there's no need to run to Walmart and stock up supplies for your underground shelter, since the asteroid is not expected to get close enough to come into Earths atmosphere.

"2005 YU55 cannot hit Earth, at least over the interval that we can compute the motion reliably, which extends for several hundred years," said research scientist Lance Benner (pictured below), of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

Astronomers are looking forward to this so that they can collect images, video, and data to be able to understand asteroids better. The Goldstone telescope (pictured above) in the California desert will use some new technology for this asteroid's pass-by.  "It shows us how big it is, it can show us features on the asteroid, it can tell us information about the asteroid's rotation period," Benner explained.

You do not need to have access to the Goldstone telescope to see this, however, because it will be relatively dim as it passes by, you will need some help to find the space rock. "You should be able to spot the asteroid with [a] telescope if it has an aperture of at least 6 to 8 inches," Alan MacRobert of Sky & Telescope magazine said.

If you would like to check it out, but don't know where to look at what time, the asteroid's coordinates at any given time can be looked up at JPL's Solar System Dynamics website, which is found here: http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=2005%20YU55;orb=1.

Sources: Yahoo news, NASA, space.com