
The meteor is passing between the moon and the Earth very soon, one of many close encounters just this year.
A huge piece of space rock will pass frighteningly close to the Earth, but fortunately it poses no threat to out planet. However, it is the 17th time that an asteroid has come between the Earth and the moon’s orbit just this year, with asteroid 2018 DU expected to come within 175,000 miles from the Earth Feb. 25.
The asteroid was found thanks to the Virtual Telescope Project, and it is about 10 meters in width, which certainly would not make it large enough to wipe out life on Earth but could cause some significant damage since it is not much smaller than the Chelyabinsk meteor.
“The telescope tracked the apparent motion of the asteroid, this is why stars leave long trails, while the asteroid looks like a sharp dot of light in the center of the image,” according to the VTP website. “At the imaging time, asteroid 2018 DU was at about 315.000 km from the Earth, closer than our Moon, and it was approaching us. This ~10 meters large asteroid will reach its minimum distance (284.000 km) from us on 25 Feb. 2018, at 18:22 UTC.”
Leave a Reply