Take Cover People! A Large Asteroid To Fly By Earth On Monday -NASA

Flying by? Where is it headed though? Here is what NASA is saying:
"The closest pass to Earth by a large asteroid until 2027 is due to happen on Monday, according to Nasa, which said the half-kilometre wide object posed no danger to the planet.


The asteroid, which is called 2004 BL86, will pass within 745,000 miles of Earth – around three times the distance to the Moon – meaning it will be visible from the surface with telescopes or even binoculars.

In the US the closest moment of the pass will come just after 11am ET, when BL86 will be visible in the sky between Jupiter and the constellation Gemini.

Asteroids pass the Earth almost constantly but BL86, which was discovered in 2004, is unusual in its size – at approximately 550 metres across it is one of the larger objects to pass our planet this century. Another object of comparable scale isn’t scheduled to pass us by for another 12 years, Nasa said, when asteroid 1999 AN10, an 800m-1800m behemoth which last passed the Earth in 1946, is set to return to our skies.

In a news release, Don Yeomans, the recently retired manager of Nasa’s jet propulsion laboratory, said the flyby offered a chance for scientists to study asteroids up close.

“While it poses no threat to Earth in the foreseeable future, it’s a relatively close pass by a relatively large asteroid, so it provides us a unique opportunity to observe and learn more,” he said.

Nasa will use radar and microwave radiation to take snapshots of the object as it passes, using the Deep Space Network array in Goldstone, California as well as the Arecibo observatory in Puerto Rico. But BL86 will be easily visible with telescopes or binoculars, Nasa said.

Yeomans plans to grab his favourite pair of binoculars to look for the object.

“There is something about asteroids that makes me want to look up,” he said.